ST. PETERSBURG (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th June, 2021) T. PETERST. PETERSBURG (Pakistan Point news / Sputnik - 07th June, 2021) BURG, Russia, June 7 (ST. PETERSBURG (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th June, 2021) putnik), Jonathan Rowson - The Qatari government's proactive economic approach has helped facilitate a strengthening of the country's business ties with Russia, ST. PETERSBURG (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th June, 2021) heikh Ali Alwaleed Al-Thani, the CEO of Qatar's Investment Promotion Agency (IPA), told ST. PETERSBURG (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 07th June, 2021) putnik in an interview.
Bilateral trade between Qatar and Russia has seen "robust growth" of more than 200% over recent years, Al-Thani said, adding that the creation of new bilateral organizations, such as the Russia-Qatar Business Council, has helped to deepen economic ties.
"We think there's good ground to build upon. We have also established the Russia-Qatar Business Council recently. Also, there is the Russia-Qatar Investment and Trade Advisory, which operates under the embassy, which was developed to help ease Russian investors' access to the local economy and to facilitate their investment activities," the IPA CEO said on the sidelines of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).
Almost 80 Russian or joint Russian-Qatari companies are currently operating in Qatar, and the IPA is helping more Russian firms enter the Qatari market, Al-Thani said.
"As for the IPA, we are supporting all these different entities and also engaging directly with Russian companies in terms of signing MoUs [memorandums of understanding], helping and assisting them by providing our consultancy services, to matchmake between the Russian and Qatari private sectors, and to generally help them access and benefit from opportunities in our economy," the IPA's CEO remarked.
Al-Thani also noted that Qatar is the largest investor in the Russian economy out of the Gulf Cooperation Council states.
At SPIEF's plenary session on Friday, Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani said that Qatari investments in Russia amounted to more than $13 billion, adding that Doha was looking to add significantly to this figure.
The Qatari government's proactive economic approach, which includes the entry into force of Law No. 1 of 2019 that opened up all economic sectors to liberalization, has also helped to lessen the economic damage caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Al-Thani said.
"Overall, we believe that in this environment, it takes an effective and proactive public sector approach to help mitigate the effects (of the pandemic) and this is the approach that we've been taking," the IPA's CEO stated.
Thanks to the swift measures of the government in Doha, foreign direct investment inflows contracted less than the roughly 40% global decrease predicted by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development last year, Al-Thani said, adding that "we see also robust growth in the digitally-dominated sectors."
Qatar was the guest country at this year's edition of SPIEF, which was held from June 2-5 in the Russian city of St. Petersburg. Rossiya Segodnya was an official media partner of the event.
In total, more than 800 agreements, worth in excess of 3.8 trillion rubles ($52 billion), were signed at the four-day event, Anton Kobyakov, a Russian presidential adviser and SPIEF executive secretary, said Saturday.
