Mohammed Barakat, Managing Director and Treasurer of the Board of Directors of US-Qatar Business Council
The FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 offers a great opportunity to highlight Qatari expertise, particularly in developing multiple stadiums, transportation infrastructure including airports and roadways, and meeting facilities. World Cup is a regional legacy and Qatar’s infrastructure attracts companies and potential investors said a senior official during an event.
American University’s Kogod School of Business (KSB) convened its Ninth annual Sovereign Wealth Funds (SWF) Conference recently, held hybrid-in-person and virtually, from American University (AU) in Washington, DC.
Addressing the panel discussion entitled ‘Assessment of Current Changes (SWFs in Uncharted Territory)’, Managing Director and Treasurer of the Board of Directors of US-Qatar Business Council (USQBC) Mohammed Barakat said, Qatar aims to become a conference and tourist destination, expanding on past successes such as the Doha Forum, Qatar Economic Forum by Bloomberg, World Innovation Summit for Health (WISH).
In the last few years there have been lot of international conferences in Qatar. Many of these international conferences are picking Qatar as destination.
Around $200bn was spent since the World Cup was awarded not just for the sport facilities which is just a fraction of that went to build the stadiums and sports activities, Barakat said adding that a lot of it went to roads, expanding of the port and airport (60 million passenger capacity), building the infrastructure to attract potential investors.
Responding to query about the balance between domestic and international portfolios for Sovereign Wealth Funds, in Qatar and the GCC, Barakat said the balance of the portfolio is definitely the initial idea of the Sovereign Wealth Funds. “When COVID-19 started a lot of companies looked in new places to manufacture that have potentially cheap energy, raw material, land and labour. Qatar and the GCC have been looking to attract more FDIs into their nation and to do that you need to have full infrastructure and that’s where investments come in.” He cited the examples of the infrastructure in the ports (Hamad Port), airline, aviation and noted that Qatar Airways is the biggest cargo operator in the world now."
Speaking about the World Cup, Barakat said, “World Cup is a regional legacy and there are a lot of things that have happened in the process of this being accomplished. This is a major international event after the pandemic. Usually, the World Cup attracts 1.2 million outsiders but this year there is an estimation of 2.2 million and the capacity is going to be across this region. So, the legacy after the World Cup is people understanding the region.
Barakat explained the compact nature of the World Cup, with all the stadiums near to one another. “ It is the first carbon-neutral World Cup. A lot of the stadiums are built in a way that some of them will be taken down and donated to nations that might need it. Qatar is bidding on a lot of sport events – the Asian Games after the World Cup, they are going to bid on the Olympics and will utilise that has been built to do lot of sport activities like hosting events, being able to facilitate these events after the success of this World Cup. The idea is that the country will be able to compete with many nations to attract more sports events.”
“There is a lot of things that will bring attraction to this region. If you want to tie it to the Sovereign Wealth Funds - now people will see how much payouts they can get when they maybe potentially investing in this region rather than focusing on outside regions,” he added.
Babak Hafezi CEO, HafeziCapital International Consulting & Investing; Adjunct Professor, American University also spoke during the panel discussion and Diego López Founder and Managing Director, Global SWF moderated the event.
