Qatar happy to be in the spotlight on world stage

Qatar's juggernaut economy is about to hit the brakes. But downtown Doha does not feel like a city in slowdown, as Sean Cronin discovers.

Qatar is spending some US$125 billion preparing for the Fifa World Cup and other mega projects that will include a new airport, port and railway. Emre Rende for The National

Qatar's juggernaut economy is about to hit the brakes. But downtown Doha does not feel like a city slowing down.

Neither is the world's richest per-capita nation bracing for any hard landing as economic growth retreats from more than 14 per cent last year to a predicted 6 per cent this year.

Gas production may have plateaued, but Qatar's invisible exports of geopolitical influence are growing by the day.

The country is spending some US$125 billion (Dh459.15bn) preparing for the Fifa World Cup and other mega projects that will include a new airport, port and railway.

At the same time it is increasingly playing the part of both peacemaker and participant in regional diplomacy and conflict in some parts - forging unlikely partnerships in the process.

"Qatar likes to be everyone's friend," says Connie Warren, a Canadian expat enjoying a morning coffee in the city's restored Souq Waqif.

She and her friends, Doha's answer to TV's Desperate Housewives, gather regularly at the cafe to swap news and tease the troop of mounted policemen in traditional maroon and white garb as they pass back and forth through the alleyways.

The banter breaks out amid peals of laughter every time the horsemen pass. "We've all picked out our favourite guys," says Lucy Pedzinski who is also Canadian.

The men on horseback are as much amused by the comedic flirtation as the women who have come to Doha from all over the world.

"We have a wonderful lifestyle here. There's too much going on every week," says Mrs Pedzinski, from Ontario. "Everywhere you look there is construction."

Qatar's successful bid to host the 2022 World Cup football tournament last year put the country in the global spotlight. But it had already secured its spot on the world stage of business and politics.

There are few countries of comparative size that pack a geopolitical punch as big as this nation of 1.8 million people, of whom less than 300,000 are nationals.

It was the first Arab state to recognise the Libyan rebels in that country's civil war last year, sending Mirage fighter jets to join the coalition. It has been heavily critical of the regime of Syria's president Bashar Al Assad and has also become involved in attempts to mediate in Yemen.

But perhaps its most noteworthy diplomatic play has been to invite the Taliban to open an office in the capital.

Such involvement has made Qatar many friends, while holding the potential to create a similar number of enemies in a politically charged region.

In the lobby of Doha's distinctive pyramid-shaped Sheraton Hotel, that role is plain to see.

In one room the country's prime minister is calling for an end to the bloodshed in Syria.

Next door Saudi Arabia's foreign minister and his GCC counterparts are discussing a territorial dispute between the UAE and Iran over a group of islands near the Strait of Hormuz. Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general and the current UN Arab League envoy is here too.

The cameramen outside do not know which way to position their tripods for fear of missing one elder statesman or another.

The Sheraton is a window on the country's journey from a pearl-diving outpost to major gas exporter to geopolitical player. When the hotel was built in 1982, Qatar was at the start of a near decade-long decline in the price of oil and its economic prospects looked bleak.

Its vast gas wealth was only discovered in 1971 - with estimated reserves of more than 900 trillion standard cubic feet - or about 10 per cent of the world's known reserves. The problem was Qatar was not close enough to potential customers for it to be of any commercial benefit.

It was only in the mid 1990s that the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, started to borrow heavily on international markets to invest in a series of industrial facilities to chill the gas to liquid form so it could be transported by ship around the world.

It was a huge risk but one that set the tiny country on the road to becoming the world's largest exporter of liquefied natural gas.

By locking customers into long term contracts, it avoided the price volatility that some of its larger oil exporting neighbours have experienced.

As gas production increased every year so, too, did the country's economic output. Nominal GDP has grown tenfold in a decade to $186bn. In the five years to 2016, Qatar plans to spend $125bn on infrastructure projects alone.

Qataris are the richest people in the world per head of population and six months ago they got considerably richer when the government increased state employee wages and benefits by some 60 per cent. Military officers received increases of 120 per cent - a notable bonus in the year of the Arab Spring.

In the capital today rich Qataris are spending on everything from sports cars to cosmetic surgery.

At the Dr Hassan Al Abdulla Medical Center in Doha, business has never been better. The public sector pay rise this year has encouraged more Qataris to come to the clinic for treatments that include botox and fillers to the laser removal of hair - its most popular procedure.

"Our business jumped," said Faisal Al Abdulla, a partner in his father's clinic. He estimates turnover has grown by about 15 per cent over the year.

"The number of clients has increased and the number of services we offer has increased because of the economic boom," he says.

It is a far cry from the early 1980s when his father returned from medical school in the US to work at the city's Hamad Hospital.

Three decades later a "full body" laser hair removal treatment at his clinic will cost you 6,000 Omani rials or 10,000 rials if you want your back and buttocks included. Overweight people are charged 25 per cent more.

There are many of them in Qatar, the sixth most obese nation in the world, according to the International Association for the Study of Obesity. It holds the same ranking for diabetes prevalence.

The poor health of Qatar's people is a concern for the government as wages rise and sedentary lifestyles follow while they seek to pursue the knowledge economy that is similarly coveted by other Gulf states.

Meanwhile, lending to individuals spiked 20 per cent last year after fairly muted growth since 2009.

The increase was even bigger for the public sector where bank loans surged 45 per cent.

But the Doha government has taken a series of measures to build a buffer against bad loans in the banking system.

The most notable of these was an injection of $1.5bn last year by the Qatar Investment Authority - one of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds.

Still, it is difficult not to view the billions of dollars being deployed over the next decade on construction and the soaring loan growth in the country as a Dubai-style bubble in the making. Other warning signs are emerging from the banking system.

Almost one fifth of loans in the country are held by the construction and property sector - a situation described as "an area of concern" by Moody's Investors Service, a credit ratings agency, in an April 12 report.

But few investors expect Doha to suffer the same fate as the city some 400km to the west - especially with a breakeven oil price of just $40 per barrel - the lowest in the Gulf.

"Doha's position is different," says Dr Arnab Banerji, who once advised Tony Blair when he was the British prime minister on economic policy and is now chairman of Collabrium Capital, an emerging markets investment house.

"They came to the party late and they've seen the car crash. There is a stop gap here, which is the ability of Qatar to fund itself. It doesn't mean the risk of a bubble is zero because ambition can make you run away from yourself."

In the Souq Waqif, the horseback patrol passes for the last time and Doha's Desperate Housewives switch seamlessly from flirtation to discussion like an al fresco version of The Doha Debates - a Qatar Foundation-funded show broadcast by the BBC. Viewed by some 400 million people worldwide, it has successfully turned Qatar into a willing moderator of the Arab world - an everyman of political, economic and cultural knowledge

"So are we going to be famous?," asks Mrs Pedzinski as we part company.

You could say Qatar is asking the world the same question.