A joint Gulf project is any industrial venture established in the GCC region in collaboration between governments or private sectors of at least two Gulf countries and with or without the participation of Arab or foreign capital
Qatar accounts for more than 11% share of joint Gulf industrial projects, which are exclusively funded by capital from the GCC region, a report has shown.
Quoting the Gulf Organisation for Industrial Consulting (Goic)’s IMI Plus Data, Dun & Bradstreet said the total number of joint industrial projects exclusively funded by capital from the Gulf region in 2013 stood at 232, with investments valued at about $23bn.
The UAE has the largest share of joint projects with 42.7%, followed by Saudi Arabia with 25%.
Meanwhile, according to Goic, the joint Gulf industrial projects offered jobs to more than 59,000 people.
On the other hand, there were as many as 3015 joint Gulf-Arab foreign projects with cumulated investments worth about $150.8bn and employing around 360,000 people.
Joint Gulf ventures constituted about 7.1 % of the total joint industrial projects, and the cumulated Gulf capital invested in joint projects was estimated at 13.2% of the total invested funds in industrial projects, it said.
In terms of investments in joint Gulf projects Saudi Arabia had the highest share (37.6%), followed by Qatar (19.5%), Bahrain (18.8%), Oman (13.9%), UAE (8.9%) and Kuwait (1.3%).
Saudi Arabia also had the highest share of employments (about 37.1%) followed by UAE (35.2%) and other GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) countries.
The report said some 28% of the total joint Gulf factories (65) were engaged in the fields of chemicals and plastics. This is followed by the construction materials industry with some 43 factories (18.5%), food and beverage industry (14.2%), manufactured metal products (11.6%), basic metals industries (6%) and other industries (21.7%).
The chemicals, rubber and plastic sector had the biggest share of investments worth $11.2bn (48.7%), mostly in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, followed by the basic metals industry with investments worth about $7.2bn (31.2%), mostly in Bahrain, Oman and Saudi Arabia, construction materials industry (7.7%), food and beverage industries (4%) and other industries. A joint Gulf project is any industrial venture established in the GCC region in collaboration between governments or private sectors of at least two Gulf countries and with or without the participation of Arab or foreign capital.
According to Goic, there are many economic benefits to these joint industrial projects. These include providing necessary capital to start industrial projects, notably large ones, the size of the regional market that helps achieve higher production capacities, economies of scale and interlocking domestic and regional production sectors.
Thus, a joint economic integration base is created and the dependence of GCC economies on each other gets increased.
Furthermore, GOIC said joint ventures result in risk distribution among stakeholders and help “resettle and transfer” technology, should foreign stakeholders from developed countries take part in these projects.
