CEO Foreword

Dear Colleagues,

The year 2022 has been one of Qatar’s most eventful years in recent history. After a 12-year preparation, the country has successfully hosted the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022^TM for the first time in the Middle East and the Arab world and fulfilled its promise to deliver an exceptional tournament.

This achievement exemplifies this year’s Qatar National Day theme, “Our Unity is Our Strength", and will forever be a source of pride for Qatar’s people. With the World Cup final held on the same day, this sporting event has also brought us the most festive and memorable commemoration of the national day.

We celebrate with Qatar in this milestone and its many achievements throughout the year. I am proud to say that, by giving our best efforts to drive economic development and diversification, we count as a significant contributor to the country’s success.

At the QFC, we witnessed another year of growth, with more firms joining our community, contributing investment, expertise, and jobs to the Qatari market.

We continued to forge strategic partnerships to further our work in developing targeted industries and create more opportunities for knowledge exchange, innovation, and collaboration. Our efforts led to the signing of 11 Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) and two Letters of Intent.

Among these agreements, our MoU with Digital Poland and Enterprise Singapore are significant for being the QFC’s first partnership with an organisation in these countries. Our network greatly influences our capacity to attract companies to invest in Qatar and stimulate the local economy. With our new partners, we have opened the door to two more markets with unique specialisations and investment opportunities.

In terms of engagement, we actively participated and organised events in Qatar and other cities around the world. We set foot in Singapore, Berlin, Munich and Washington DC to host events that gathered their business leaders, trade officials, and other key stakeholders to initiate conversations on potential bilateral trade and investment. We were also present at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting held in Davos, Switzerland and sat on a panel to discuss the critical role of finance in building a sustainable world.

Locally, we supported a career exploration programme for the benefit of Qatar’s youth and to help develop talent within the financial market. We also brought together industry experts and thought leaders from the international Islamic finance community by co-hosting the 4th IFSB Innovation Forum in Doha.

One of our most notable achievements during the year, which also demonstrates our commitment to supporting the development of a sustainable economy, was introducing the QFC Sustainable Framework for Sukuk and Bonds, the first in the GCC. With this Framework, we aim to spur growth in the local debt capital market by promoting transparency and trust between borrowers and investors.

All our initiatives present opportunities to advance our mission to transform Doha into a leading global financial and business hub. With a committed team, I look forward to creating more such opportunities in 2023.

I want to close by thanking everyone for their hard work, which has enabled us to see a successful year. We are here to ensure that the momentum to realising the Qatar National Vision 2030 continues. I believe that our collective effort has helped that to happen in 2022.

Sincerely,