Fahad Ali Al Kuwari, senior manager of investor relations at Invest Qatar, is interviewed during the Collision 2024 Conference in Toronto, Canada, June 18, 2024. Invest Qatar, the Gulf Arab state’s investment promotion agency, told Xinhua that the country plans to strengthen cooperation with China and attract more Chinese investment to diversify its economy from oil and gas. (Photo by Zou Zheng/Xinhua)
Martina Fuchs
TORONTO, June 19 (Xinhua) — Invest Qatar, the Gulf Arab state’s investment promotion agency, told Xinhua that the country plans to strengthen cooperation with China and attract more Chinese investment as it seeks to diversify its economy away from oil and gas.
“We have opened an office in Hong Kong to strengthen our penetration into the Chinese market. China is strong in a number of technologies. China is probably number one in the world in rapid hyperscaling,” Fahad Ali Al Kuwari, senior investor relations manager at Invest Qatar, said at Collision, one of the world’s leading technology conferences, taking place in Toronto from June 17-20.
“The expertise, know-how and talent is there in China and we want to benefit from that. We hope that Qatar can provide a platform to enable Chinese companies to access markets that they have not been able to access before,” he stressed.
Qatar is the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas and one of the Middle East’s leading financial hubs, with the fifth largest Islamic financial assets in the world.
The emirate and the peninsular Arab nation are also home to Qatar Airways and have emerged as a tourist destination with visa-free access for citizens of more than 100 countries.
“We are a very small country with a population of around 300,000 people, but we are rich in oil and natural gas. We have a very strong financial and logistics sector which we have been using to export hydrocarbons,” Al Kuwari explained.
“However, we want to diversify into other sectors, working not only with large companies but also with small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs),” he stressed.
According to data released by the General Administration of Customs of China (GAC) in May, total merchandise trade between China and Arab League member states is expected to surge from 303.81 billion yuan in 2004 to 2.8 trillion yuan (about U.S. $393.75 billion) in 2023, an increase of 820.9 percent.
The United Arab Emirates, Iraq, Oman, Qatar, Egypt and Saudi Arabia are China’s top six trading partners in the Arab League in terms of trade volume, accounting for 84.8 percent of the total trade volume between China and Arab countries in the first four months, according to GAC data.
Collision, part of the Web Summit event, said in a press release that it attracted 37,832 participants from 117 countries.
This will be the final Collision event and the final year in Toronto before transitioning to Web Summit Vancouver in May 2025. ■
Fahad Ali Al Kuwari, senior manager of investor relations at Invest Qatar, speaks in an interview at the Collision 2024 conference in Toronto, Canada, June 18, 2024. Invest Qatar, the Gulf Arab state’s investment promotion agency, told Xinhua that the country plans to strengthen cooperation with China and attract more Chinese investment to diversify its economy from oil and gas. (Photo by Zou Zheng/Xinhua)
Fahad Ali Al Kuwari, senior manager of investor relations at Invest Qatar, speaks in an interview at the Collision 2024 conference in Toronto, Canada, June 18, 2024. Invest Qatar, the Gulf Arab state’s investment promotion agency, told Xinhua that the country plans to strengthen cooperation with China and attract more Chinese investment to diversify its economy from oil and gas. (Photo by Zou Zheng/Xinhua)
