DOHA: The blockade that was aimed at harming the Qatari economy has failed to achieve its goals, and the Qatari economy has succeeded in overcoming all the challenges posed by illegal blockade, said Dr Khalid Rashid Alkhater, specialist in monetary policy and political economy.
“The blockade did not affect the fulfillment of the State of Qatar’s commitments to supply gas to its customers in the world, as it is the largest exporter of LNG. The attempts to harm the national currency was not successful due to prudent monetary policy adopted by the Qatar Central bank,” Alkhater added during a seminar organised on Sunday at Ritz-Carlton Hotel under the theme ‘Qatar Dignity and Victory after nine months of siege’.
Alkhater pointed out that the Qatari economy enjoys great resources, and new policy of the country is moving towards economic diversification and is continuing infrastructure development.
To face the siege, the Qatari government has played an important role as importer and distributor and to maintain the price of several products through diversifying the sources and means of imports.
Qatar has also adopted policies to stimulate local production and private sector to increase the production in agricultural and livestock production and other industries. It has announced to increase the production of gas by 30 percent and is working on expansion of storage capacities for food security and logistics.
Dr Majid bin Mohammed Al Ansari, Professor of Political Sociology at Qatar University said that Qatar has defeated the siege in all aspects. He mentioned that “the reasons that led to this success is Qatar’s strong diplomacy, which played a major role in addressing this crisis. Several visits by many Qatari officials to foreign countries and sending strong messages to the international community confused the diplomacy of the siege countries and who could not respond to this strong diplomacy”.
Another important reasons for the success of Qatar against the diplomatic of the siege countries is the refusal to give up to unjust demands, Al Ansari added.
He noted that Qatar’s soft power played a major role in confronting the blockade, including the media, appreciating also the wise Qatari leadership in the alliance with Turkey, adding that Qatar has contacts with many countries. Regarding the lessons learned from the blockade, he said “The regional system ( GCC framework) is not enough to achieve regional security in the current situation,” stressing on the need to strengthen relations beyond this region.
