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2022 World Cup in Qatar |
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Qatar
will spend about $57 billion
over the next decade on infrastructure including stadiums to
support the soccer World Cup in 2022, which will boost lending
at the country’s banks, Moody’s Investors Service said.
In a report emailed today, Moody’s analyst Elena Panayiotou
said: “We expect all Qatari
banks to benefit from stronger economic activity and higher
credit demand over the next 12 years.”
The spending will create long-term business growth opportunities
for the banks and “enhance franchise development in their domestic
market,” she said.
The country plans to spend $4 billion on the stadium construction
and refurbishment program. A new 200,000 population city called
Lusail, north of the capital, is scheduled to be built over
the next decade and will feature the stadium that hosts the
World Cup final.
Few of the computer generated images of stadiums to be built:
Click Here
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Qatar expects to construct a rail and metro network, costing more
than $25 billion, in Doha and extending to cities outside the capital.
Qatar’s overall banking assets of $129.4 billion at the end of 2009 represented about 130 percent of its gross domestic product, which is a low ratio compared with other developed markets, Moody’s said. Large foreign banks based in Qatar and the bigger local lenders led by Qatar National Bank SAQ are likely to benefit the most from the investments, according to the report. Qatar, the world’s biggest liquefied natural gas exporter, is already spending billions of dollars on property, financial services and aviation. Its economy is poised to grow 16 percent in 2010 and 18.6 percent in 2011, according to the Washington based International Monetary Fund. Securing longer-term funding will be a key challenge for Qatari banks as the country invests in infrastructure, Moody’s said. This will probably boost issues of longer-term bonds in international markets to address maturity mismatches, according to the Moody’s report.
ALSO:
CRUISE ACCOMMODATION:
Qatar plans to use cruise ships to accommodate visitors during the 2022 Word Cup (Getty Images) Qatar is planning to use cruise ships to accommodate visitors during the World Cup tournament in 2022, Arabian Business has learned. Qatar is planning to have in place around 240 properties before the start of the World Cup in 2022, according to FIFA’s official report on the evaluation of the Qatari bid.
The report stated that Qatar currently has 100 existing hotels, villages and compounds spread across the seven host cities. An additional 140 properties will be sourced or constructed to meet accommodation needs, “including a cruise ship project in Al Wakrah with 6,000 rooms,” the report added.
“Cruise ships are good solutions... it makes sense,” said Jalil Mekouar, regional director and head of real estate advisory at Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels.
“Qatar will face similar issues as other countries have been facing, in terms of what do you do with all the inventory once the event is over… This challenge will be amplified for Qatar as we are talking about a city state, pretty much, and we talking of a small place physically, which is not as large as South Africa,” he added.
The report stated that two thirds of the new supply of inventory, which will amount to around an extra 55,000 rooms, will be covered by 17 construction projects, 13 of which will be completed by 2016.
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As part of its bid, Qatar said it plans to double
the number of hotel rooms to nearly 90,000 in time for the tournament,
which will result in an investment of around $17bn over the
next five years.
While the report stated Qatar currently attracts around one
million visitors a year and aims to grow visitor numbers by
20 percent in the next five years, the country is already suffering
from an oversupply in its hotel sector.
“The World
Cup announcement has come at a crucial time in the growth of
the hotel sector in Doha, which many privately feared was heading
for oversupply and a rate war, as is being experienced now in
Dubai’s Al Barsha district, for example,” said Guy Wilkinson,
general manager at Viability, a Dubai-based hospitality consultancy
company.
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With the oversupply issue already in place, Mekouar said “talk
to double [the inventory] is just going to emphasis the problem
rather than solve it.
” However, Wilkinson was confident that growth in the tourism sector
in Qatar could sustain the growth in supply.
“Qatar has already witnessed the importance of a major global sporting event to its hotel sector, when it hosted the 15th Asian Games in 2006. Not only were the hotels booked out during the two weeks of the games themselves, but they received significant and increasing demand for at least two or three years before that,” he added.
Using cruise ships as a short-term answer is one that was also used in South Africa during the last World Cup, when ships anchored off Port Elizabeth, Durban and Cape Town helped supply up to 4,500 extra rooms as temporary accommodation.
While cruise ships are one answer to the temporary demand for accommodation, Mekouar said the oversupply issue in general “is certainly something to be looked at and I am interested to see what the response of the Qataris is.
Few of the computer generated images of stadiums to be built:
Click Here
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