Qatar Financial Center wants to attract $ 25 billion in foreign investment by 2022 as Gulf split ends

Qatar Financial Center wants to attract $ 25 billion in direct foreign investment inflows by 2022, its chief executive, Yousuf Al-Jaida, told CNBC in an exclusive interview on Wednesday.

It comes a week after Saudi Arabia restored diplomatic ties with neighboring Qatar, ending more than three years of blockade against the small, hostile nation.

The reconciliation means a stronger, more powerful Council for Gulf Cooperation, Al-Jaida said.

“I think the impact is going to be positive on trade, which means countries are going to work together now,” he added.

Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt, closed its land, sea and air borders with Qatar in 2017, after accusing Doha of links to terrorism. Qatar has denied the allegations.

The thawing of tensions – a few weeks before the end of President Donald Trump’s term in the White House – is a major shift in politics in the region.

Doha competes with global financial centers in the region, including Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia’s capital Riyadh.

Dubai, one of the region’s transportation and tourism centers, is facing new competition from Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia is trying to attract multinational corporations to the capital as part of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s ambitious Vision 2030 blueprint to diversify the kingdom’s economy.

Al-Jaida said Doha’s lead over its competitors was the push to develop Islamic finance and fintech, as well as financial services in general.

The financial center’s ambitious FDI target – coupled with the goal of creating 10,000 new jobs and more than 1,000 companies by 2022 – will get a boost from the GCC detainees, he said.

“From a QFC perspective, multinational companies are fairly based throughout the GCC, and that’s going to mean more liberal travel, more access to markets. That’s going to mean more foreign direct investment for Doha. That’s why we’re very optimistic about it,” he said. -Jaida said.

The Six-Nation GCC is a political, economic and social alliance that includes Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar.

According to the World Bank, Qatar’s economy is expected to grow by 3% in 2021, and is the best among GCC countries.

Qatar, one of the world’s richest countries per capita, has also focused on sports. The country will host the 2022 World Cup, and has called on the International Olympic Committee to take part in the “ongoing dialogue” on the possible hosting of the 2032 Games.

The ties between the Gulf neighbors run deep, and the blockade left a gap that affected trade in the GCC.

According to Brookings Institution, the flights between Qatar and its neighbors to the Gulf were 70 per day before the crash. The airline sector, hit hard by the global pandemic, will benefit significantly from cooling tensions.

Before the blockade, trade flows between Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were in billions and in millions of countries with Bahrain, the think tank said.

Al-Jaida told CNBC that work still needed to be done to build trust between Qatar and its neighbors in the Gulf and Egypt, but ‘it is behind us and we are working towards a better future for the whole region, so everyone is optimistic. ‘