Qatar Financial Centre (QFC), one of the world’s leading and fastest growing onshore business and financial centres, launched its landmark ‘Qatar Capital Market Report 2020,’ which highlights major capital market advances in Qatar, identifies how comparator markets have forged ahead on their developmental journeys and how QFC and its regulatory partners can build further on its successes to become a regional world-class financial hub.

The report, which was unveiled in an engaging webinar entitled, ‘Qatar’s Burgeoning Capital Markets’ as part of QFC’s #AccessQatar Webcast Series, provides a comprehensive review of the performance of Qatar’s capital markets over the past several years, indicating that the country is on the path to developing deeper and more diversified capital markets.

The ‘Qatar Capital Market Report 2020’ shows that Qatar is the region’s second-largest equity market with a market capitalisation of USD 160 billion from 47 listed companies by the end of 2019. The report goes on to indicate that that bond and sukuk issuance in Qatar reached USD 28 billion in 2019, largely driven by government issuance.

During the webinar, Fahmi Alghussein, CEO, Aventicum Capital Management (Qatar) and Andrew Wingfield, Partner, Simmons & Simmons (Qatar), discussed the report’s key recommendations for Qatar’s capital market development. The report recommends that a masterplan for Qatar’s capital markets should identify specific initiatives to encourage more primary market issuances, facilitate liquidity in secondary markets, establish a wider investment pool, and promote foreign investment through the enhancement of the relevant regulatory frameworks, market infrastructure, capacity building and incentivisation programmes.