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Satyendra Pathak
Doha
Qatar's outlook is stable and the country's economy is on track to improve in 2018 from 2017, FocusEconomics has said in its latest report.
According to FocusEconomics Consensus Forecast - Middle East & North Africa for June, Qatar's economy this year would be supported by higher oil prices, economic reforms and the government's infrastructure investment push in preparation for the 2022 Fifa World Cup.
FocusEconomics panelists have forecast growth of 2.8 percent for Qatar in 2018, which is down 0.1 percentage points from last month's projection.
The country will achieve the same growth rate of 2.8 percent for the next four years from 2019 to 2022, the report said. The country's gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to reach $217 billion in 2022, the report said.
Thanks to Qatar's ability to re-route its trade, the country's merchandise trade surplus was nearly 50 percent higher in April this year compared to the same month of 2017, the report added.
In the same month, the report said, business conditions in the non-oil private sector continued to improve.
Inflation slowed to 0.4 percent in March compared to 0.8 percent in February this year, the report said.
"Our panel sees inflation averaging 2.1 percent in 2018 and 2.7 percent in 2019," the report said.
The report has also indicated that inflation would remain below 2.5 percent for the next three years.
The GDP per capita in Qatar will also increase from $60,940 in 2017 to $76,502 in 2022, the report said.
According to the annual data released as part of the report, the overnight lending rate in the country would continue to rise from the current level and reach up to 6.28 percent by 2022. Qatari riyal will continue to be pegged at $3.64 in the years to come, the report said.
According to the report, the country would witness a sustained increase in both imports and exports. While the merchandise exports from the country are expected to rise from $67.1 billion up to $80.6 billion in 2022, the report said, merchandise imports would increase up to $37.1 billion in the same year.
FocusEconomics, a leading provider of economic analysis, has also forecast that Qatar's trade balance would rise from $36.5 billion in 2017 to $43.8 billion in 2018.
The report has also projected that Qatar's current account balance turned positive and accounted for 3.8 percent of the total GDP. The percentage of current account balance would rise up to 5.5 percent in 2018, the report said.
Qatar's current account balance turned positive to $6.4 billion in 2017 and is expected to rise to $9.6 billion in 2018, the report said, adding the percentage of current account balance to the county's GDP also tuned positive to 3.8 percent in 2017 and is expected to rise to 5.5 percent this year.