The Qatar Financial Centre (QFC), one of the world's leading and fastest growing onshore business and financial centres, has announced its new strategy for achieving its ambitious targets for 2022.

The number of firms registered on the QFC platform increased by 31% in 2018 to reach over 600, well past the halfway mark of reaching 1,000 firms by 2022. The QFC's new strategy includes a focus on specific service industries, as well as new emerging markets with a combined value of over USD $2.1 trillion.

New Industries and Markets

The QFC's strategy includes a focus on specific service industries including digital, media, sports, and financial services. The financial services offering will complement FinTech, Asset Management, Capital Markets and Islamic Finance. Building on Qatar's well-established.
international expertise in Islamic Finance, the QFC has also announced earlier a vision to cover the entire globe's Islamic Finance transactions, estimated at USD $2 trillion, between three financial centres in Qatar, Turkey and Malaysia. Under this ambitious plan, Turkey would cover Islamic Finance needs in Europe, Qatar would serve the greater Middle East and Malaysia would cater to Asia.
In addition, the QFC will focus on further developing partnerships as part of a New Emerging Belt Initiative (NEBI), an economic corridor that focuses on strategic alliances with markets such as Kuwait, Oman, Turkey, Pakistan and India. These new emerging markets have been identified because they possess a large potential for future growth, especially considering that their combined GDP is estimated to be approximately US $2.1 trillion, with total global FDI from these markets exceeding US $150 billion.
The QFC has also put in place an attractive incentives programme to attract multinational companies to Qatar by offering free offices, highly-competitive tax incentives, as well as seed capital to cover five years of operating expenses in return for a 10-year commitment.
Thanks to its central geographic location and robust economy, Qatar is already an attractive international business hub, with 20 business councils registered on the QFC's platform from countries around the world such as Canada, Nigeria, Singapore, Spain, India and many others.