Qatar Financial Centre publishes reference tome

As part of Qatar's economic diversification programme, the Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) has launched a financial industry information reference guide called QFinance.

The print and online versions of the guide contain 300 contributed articles on financial services best practices, supplemented by an additional 50 editorial viewpoints on the QFinance website. The QFC and its partner, Bloomsbury Publishing, plan to update the website daily and the print version annually.

"QFinance is a serious piece of work," said Stuart Pearce, chief executive and director general of the QFC Authority. "It is what Qatar is all about -- delivering knowledge to people around the world." The country has ambitions to become the global leader in financial knowledge.

Commenting on the timing of the launch, Bloomsbury's chief executive, Nigel Newton, said: "QFinance has come at a moment when there is a hunger for the reasons why what just happened [last year's economic crisis], happened".

QFinance is just one symbolic piece of this Persian Gulf state's ambitious plan. Qatar is in the midst of a programme to diversify its economy away from oil and gas, with an emphasis on building a "knowledge-based" economy. The country opened its Education City in 2002, which is focusing on creating a tertiary learning centre in the region, and is currently building the research and development-oriented Qatar Science and Technology Park.

The QFC is a financial and business centre set up by the government to attract international financial services and multinational corporations to grow and develop the market for financial services in the region. Inaugurated in 2005, the centre aims to become a regional asset management and insurance hub, varying slightly from the vision of the United Arab Emirates' Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), which is to become the Gulf's banking heart. The QFC also differs from the DIFC in that it allows incorporated financial institutions to offer services both in the domestic economy and to the region.

"The QFC is part of the diversification of Qatar that includes the build-out of the financial services sector," said Pearce. "QFinance is a natural adjunct to the [country's] vision of a knowledge-based economy."

The jury is still out on whether Qatar's economic programme is working. Last year, nearly 62% of economic activity in the country was generated by oil and gas, up from 57% in 2007. And, much like its cousin Dubai, Doha is still a city under construction -- the view across Doha Bay to the new downtown is dominated by cranes and half-built skyscrapers.

One local reporter said that while the government's diversification plans are well intentioned, Qatari citizens know the "most important national project" today is the liquefied natural gas (LNG) export facility. Continuing, she explained that the economic plans are long-term and residents do not expect to see real benefits until 2013 at the earliest.

LNG is driving Qatar's robust economic growth. Earlier this year, state-owned Qatargas opened the Laffan refinery, the first of two new LNG export facilities, which will allow the firm to increase annual LNG production to 38.7 million tonnes by 2011 from 9.8 million tonnes last year. With most of that production already sold through forward contracts, the International Monetary Fund estimates Qatar will grow a whopping 18% this year, up from last year's 13.3% rise.

In 2008, financial services, insurance and real estate -- including the QFC -- generated 9.9% of local economic activity, up 16.2% year-on-year according to QNB Capital.

While the country's future knowledge-based economy may now only exist on paper and in the skeletons of rising skyscrapers, Qatar has, and will continue to have, the wherewithal to make these plans a reality.

If QFinance can stand as an example of the resources the country is putting into its diversification programme, they are definitely not lacking. The two million-word reference book is one of heft that can command a sizeable place on any boardroom bookshelf. That said, heft and size alone will not make QFinance the "google of finance", as Pearce put it. Similarly, pushing money into infrastructure and plans for a knowledge-based economy will not necessarily make Qatar a global centre for learning.

As urban thinker Richard Florida explained in a recent article, shifts in global power and clout move at a "geological" pace. "Although the US displaced England as the world's largest economy well before 1900, it was not until after World War II that New York eclipsed London as the world's preeminent financial centre," he wrote.

This is the reality that Qatar and its plethora of regional competitors face -- global recognition of symbolic products such as QFinance and the region as a producer of anything other than oil and gas is still a long way off.