The Qatar Development Bank (QDB) participated in the annual startups and entrepreneurship developments conference 2020, themed “The Art of Innovation: Innovative Startups And its importance,” held in the Russian capital Moscow, via video conferencing.
During his speech at a session entitled “The Economy of Solitude: How Companies evolved to face a new reality”, Abdulaziz bin Nasser al-Khalifa, CEO of Qatar Development Bank, highlighted the State of Qatar’s strategy to confront the economic impacts of the new coronavirus epidemic (Covid-19) on SMEs, noting the full co-operation between the various government’s departments in the State to provide an integrated package of support for private sector companies to deal with the pandemic.
Al-Khalifa referred to the directives of the wise leadership to provide financial and economic incentives to the tune of QR75bn to the private sector, and the launch of the Qatar Development Bank (QDB) for the National Security Program in response to the challenges posed by the pandemic in an effort to grant soft loans to the private sector companies affected by the impact of the pandemic and cover employee salaries and rental fees, stressing that the national guarantee program played a major role in providing a mechanism to ensure the continuation of the private sector companies work in the country, and to contribute to overcoming the pandemic’s challenges.
Speaking about how the Qatari private sector companies deal with the new changes and conditions related to the spread of the pandemic, al-Khalifa noted that the training and advisory services provided by Qatar Development Bank (QDB) during the current crisis were extremely important, along with financing services, in the companies resilience to the repercussions of the pandemic, where the Qatar Development Bank had provided a series of programs and consulting services to train companies through online platforms on dealing with various aspects related to the impact of the pandemic.
He said the Qatar Development Bank had issued a guide for small and medium-sized companies as a reference on how to deal with the pandemic and its impact on various aspects of business.
It also activated a special operations room to support small and medium-sized companies and support supply chains for the private sector to ensure business and production continuity to meet local demand and to achieve self-sufficiency in strategic commodities.
He praised the efforts of the national factories during the current crisis, and their great role in supplying the national market with various necessary products and materials, besides the role of the national factories in covering the State’s needs of basic medical materials such as sterilisers, masks, and personal safety equipment dedicated to medical frameworks, and the rapid response of national factories and raising their productivity capacity in a short time.
The State of Qatar ranked 29th globally and secondly in the Arab world in the Global Competitiveness Report issued by the World Economic Forum in 2019, in addition to the fourth rank in the index of financing small and medium companies and 12th globally according to the entrepreneurial culture index of the same report that included 141 countries.
Related Story