*Credit to key segments of private sector grew faster than total domestic credit expansion, shows QCB data

The key segments in Doha's private sector, especially trading, services, industrial manufacturing and heavy industry, got strong financial backing, which helped Qatar's commercial banks register more than 14% year-on-year growth in domestic credit in March 2020.
The credit to these sectors grew faster than the total domestic credit expansion, according to the Qatar Central Bank (QCB) data. Total domestic credit stood at QR1.01tn at the end of March 31, 2020.
The services sector saw a 43.61% yearly growth in credit to QR311.4bn, which constituted 31% of the total domestic loans this March.
The credit to the general services witnessed a 38.95% year-on-year increase to QR277.68bn, which was almost 90% of the total credit to the services sector.
Within the general services, credit to air transport was QR90.58bn, real estate QR74.32bn, hotels QR28.78bn, non-specified QR22bn, engineering QR16.16bn and land transport QR14.69bn at the end of March 2020.
In the case of financial services, it registered an impressive 98.35% growth to QR33.72bn at the end of March this year.
The banks' credit to the trading sector witnessed a 47.86% year-on-year surge to QR155.19bn, or 15% of the total domestic loans, in March 2020.
Of the QR155.19bn credit to trading, as much as QR133.66bn went to electronics and electrical equipment, QR55.57bn to the commercial agencies, QR38.44bn to non-specified segments, QR9.61bn to automobiles and spare parts, QR7.55bn to food segment, QR6.83bn to chemical and allied products, QR5.86bn to petroleum products, QR4.17bn to building materials and gypsum and QR2.51bn to Petroleum refinery.
The consumption credit grew 8.28% year-on-year to QR136.96bn, which constituted about 14% of the total domestic credit in March 2020.
The consumption credit to nationals reported 9.87% yearly increase to QR136.96bn; while those to non-Qataris fell 3.26% to QR14.83bn in the review period.
The credit to the industrials sector witnessed a yearly 4.29% year-on-year growth to QR27.47bn, which was 3% of the total domestic credit in the period in review.
Within the sector, credit to the heavy industry stood at QR11.1bn (representing a 28.32% rise), followed by natural gas at QR8.2bn (2.15% fall), industrial manufacturing at QR4.86bn (33.52% surge) and oil at QR3.3bn (65% increase).
The contracting sector saw a 2.62% year-on-year jump in credit to QR37.61bn or about 4% of the total domestic loans in the review period.
The credit to non-specified sectors, classified as others, saw 11.1% expansion to QR12.01bn at the end of March 2020.
However, the credit offtake in the real estate sector saw a 2.43% year-on-year contraction to QR196.07bn, which was 19% of the total domestic loans in March 2020.
The credit to the government registered a 16.79% annual shrinkage to QR135.52bn, which was 13% of the total domestic credit thus March.
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