DOHA: Nearly 493,500 workers were engaged in the country’s fast-paced building and construction industry in 2011 and while they collectively received wages worth a staggering QR12.37bn ($3.39bn) in the year, the sector’s production totalled five times that sum —QR60bn ($16.43bn).
The industry generated a gross value added of QR28bn ($7.67bn) which accounted for 4.5 percent of the country’s gross domestic product in the year.
The net value added (after eliminating depreciation) by the sector totalled QR26bn ($7.12bn), the country’s national office for statistics, Qatar Statistics Authority (QSA), said in a press statement yesterday.
The QSA cited excerpts from the findings of a building and construction industry survey that was conducted in 2011.
Detailed findings of the survey are to be released later, the QSA said in its statement. According to the excerpts, gross output per employee of the sector was QR152,037 ($41,564) and the gross value added per worker was QR71,543 ($19,600).
QSA said some 2,234 establishments were covered by the survey, of which 812, or 36 percent, were large ones, having 50 or more workers in their employment.
These large companies together employed a little over 368,000 workers and they collectively received wages to the tune of QR11.62bn in the year under review (2011).
The total number of workers engaged in the building and construction industry reached 393,455 in the year.
A vast majority of these workers (93.5 percent) were employed by large establishments, while the remaining 6.5 percent (or 25,374) were in the employ of smaller companies that employed less than 50 workers each. These companies totalled 1,422.
The employees of these companies collectively received wages to the tune of QR749m in the year and they together contributed gross value added of QR1.58bn.
The majority of workers (99.8 percent) of the entire building and construction industry were non-Qataris, said the QSA, adding that it regularly conducts comprehensive economic surveys annually to gather aggregate and detailed data on different types of economic activities in the country.
Surveys are conducted following international recommendations, concepts and definitions, the statistics office said.
The Peninsula
