ANALYSIS: Qatar Projects H2 2020 with covid-19 update

Description

Like most other projects markets in the GCC, Qatar has been hit by the Covid-19 pandemic. In the period March-May public sector tendering slowed to a crawl and few projects were awarded.
However, the market picked up again in June and July. Contract awards in the first six months of the year were just 10 per cent down on the same period in 2019 and considerably higher than the first half of 2018.

A major driver of this is of course with FIFA 2022 World Cup. With just over two years to go, Doha has little choice but to maintain spending on various associated infrastructure projects to ensure the event will be a success. Roads, sewerage, and drainage are at the receiving end of billions of dollars of investment to ensure the state has the capacity and capability of hosting the hundreds of thousands of fans expected to come for the tournament.

An even bigger fillip is expected in the form of the $20bn-plus investment in the forthcoming LNG programme. Awards on the main EPC packages were originally forecast for this year but even if they come in 2021, they have the potential to more than double the size of the market and provide a considerable stimulus to the local economy.

Longer term, there are still question marks over what will happen to the projects market once the World Cup is over. This is an issue for which there is still no clear answer, and which the government is expected to reveal over the next two years as part of its 2030 Vision which will drive a large part of the future project programme.

Qatar Projects Report H2-2020 is the update to this year’s popular H1 report. Focused on data, it is aimed at helping companies create strategies for targeting and growing the market by providing quick and easy use data snapshots. It uses almost exclusively adjusted data from MEED Projects, the region’s leading online projects tracking service. With 15,000 active projects tracked and more than 35,000 in total in the database, MEED Projects makes it possible to quantify current, historical, and future trends in the projects market in the region.