Before writing this article I called several friends in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to ask them about the rent for shops and offices of companies, administrative offices, warehouses and residential units for workers and employees.
I then compared the rents in these countries with those in Qatar, and realised that rents here were the highest among all these countries.
For instance, in Al Wakra, the rent for a shop on a main road can reach QR40,000 a month, while a trader in other GCC states pays this amount in a year, not a month, for a similar shop. The same applies to all other rents, regardless of whether it is for a building or a plot of land needed by commercial establishments.
The Qatari government is responsible for creating this problem by removing downtown Doha and specifying few streets for commercial activities in the city, where around a million people live. This has pushed rents to unprecedented levels.
Shop owners in the city centre search for alternative places for their businesses and to house of their workers and employees. Landlords, for their part, know there is great demand for shops and a shortage of supply, that is why they are raising the rents.
The government has stopped extending its hand to help those harmed by this. It even incites the Consumer Protection Department (CPD) at the Ministry of the Economy and Commerce against merchants. Staff at the department acts strongly and enthusiastically whenever it receives a complaint that a shop has increased its prices. They visit the shop and file a report against the shop owner for not submitting a request to the administration for raising prices. In doing this, the CPD forgets that rents for shops are on the rise and that the burden has to be borne by the customers.
The government has issued Law No.12/1972 on obligatory pricing and profit margins, Law No. 19/2006 on competition protection and the prevention of monopolies, and Law No. 8/2008 on consumer protection.
The Minister of Economy and Commerce has also formed a committee to specify price ceilings. All these measures are meant to prevent service providers and manufacturers from raising their prices without submitting a request to the government. These measures would be wonderful if they were applied in the light of the rules of justice specified by Almighty God.
All verses in the Holy Quran about justice and benevolence refer to one fact: justice should form the basis of all deals, even if this goes against one’s interests.
This encourages me to ask the government agency concerned the following: have the Ministry of Economy and Commerce; the Ministry of Interior, the Ministry of Social Affairs or even Karwa and Woqod companies got permission from the ministry to raise the prices of their services and products?
The answer will be in the negative, because they will say they are sovereign entities or monopolies. Allah will not exempt anyone from being taken to account for their actions. Everybody is equal before Allah. Allah orders us to walk an even path.
In this context, we should not forget the saying by the wise Arab, Abu Al Aswad Al Do’aly who said:
“Don’t ask people to stop doing something that you are doing”.
When government agencies fine traders for raising prices, they should also fine the people who force them to raise these prices. By this, I mean the government and the property owners.
The huge gap between rents in Qatar and in other Gulf countries is catastrophic, particularly for Qatari traders. These traders have to raise the prices of their commodities and services in order to keep up with skyrocketing shop rents. But this leads to a slide in sales.
This is why we should not wonder when we learn that many companies and commercial institutions are facing the threat of closure. We should not wonder when we hear about too many commercial disputes at Qatari courts.
The solution to this problem is very simple. The Qatari government alone can solve it if it really wants to do so. If the government gives up buildings it has rented downtown, some of which have not been used so far although they were rented years ago, it would cause rents for offices and apartments to fall.
To solve this problem another way, the government should specify the width of commercial streets. If the street’s width is more than 40 metres, for example, this street should be made a commercial one, regardless of any personal interests. If the street is 30 metres wide, for example, it should be made an administrative street. If the street is smaller in width, it can be specified for local services. If the government does this, rents for shops, showrooms and warehouses will fall the same day.
To sum up, the government is responsible for the high rents for shops, offices and residential units. Thus it is responsible for finding a solution to this problem in the best interests of the national economy and the consumers, whose high salaries are always dwarfed by the prices.
