DOHA: Qatar’s banking sector is ready to rise to the challenge of financing an expected $100bn boom in the country’s projects industry until 2022, according to MEED, which is hosting the Qatar Banking Summit scheduled on September 10-11, 2013 at the Renaissance Doha City Centre Hotel.
“We are talking about a huge scale of infrastructure financing requirement,” says Bhupendra Jain, head of corporate banking at International Bank of Qatar (IBQ). “The metro alone is going to be about $35bn and the Port project is estimated at $7bn-$8bn. Then there are roads, electricity and water, sewage, Aviation City, the stadiums for the World Cup plus hotels, new shopping malls, Lusail City etc. The bonding requirements for these projects will be a percentage of these numbers and that’s a very complex algorithm. We expect infrastructure finance demand will be in excess of $100bn.”
Leading global and regional experts on the projects and finance industries speaking at the summit will confirm that Qatar’s financial sector has indeed enough liquidity to provide the capital and project finance required to deliver mega projects in the country in the years leading up to 2022 and beyond.
Already, Qatar’s financial sector has been a key foundation of its still rapidly developing economy, with finance, insurance and reinsurance outputs now accounting for about 10 percent of the country’s GDP last year.
Moreover, total assets for Qatar’s banking industry increased at a compound annual rate of 30 percent in the last 10 years to almost $225bn; while bank lending to domestic customers grew by a similar amount in the same period to $130bn, a MEED press note said here.
Qatar Central Bank Governor H E Sheikh Abdullah bin Saoud Al Thani will deliver the event’s keynote address where he is expected to provide a comprehensive overview of the latest initiatives Qatar is implementing as part of its aspirations to become a leading financial hub in the Gulf region.
This will be followed by a comprehensive overview of Qatar’s project finance and banking sector, with dedicated panels discussing the most attractive opportunities and strategies that lending institutions and stakeholders can adopt in order to succeed in Qatar’s lucrative banking sector from a lenders’ perspective.
“Project finance stakeholders will have access to the latest information on infrastructure financing, and gain a better understanding of the implications of emerging risks as well as which capital market options (from sukuks and syndications to PPPs and IPOs) are the best way forward in funding mega infrastructure projects,” said Edmund O’ Sullivan, Chairman, MEED Events, organisers of the Qatar Banking Summit.
Despite the massive activity currently taking place in Qatar’s projects industry and its continued rise in the next few years, there is a consensus among experts that the country’s regulators should manage the timing of major infrastructure finance transactions, which will also be discussed in the summit. “I estimate the value of infrastructure required worldwide to 2030 is roughly equal to global GDP today,” says Anthony Holmes, co-founder and director of the Institute for Infrastructure Studies.
The Peninsula
