Abstract
According to press reports in December 2008, Netherlands-based Royal Haskoning
and Worley
Parsons Qatar, a subsidiary of Worley Parsons Australia, will
jointly work on the engineering design
project for the US$3.84bn New Doha
Port. Existing operations at the Doha Port will be shifted to the new
port
by the end of 2014. The port will be located to the south of Doha, between
Mesaieed and Al Wakra.
The port will enable Qatar to expand its maritime
sector, on which the country' s import and export sectors
are heavily
dependent. Qatar' s location on a peninsula in the Persian Gulf makes maritime
transport the
most sensible option, with easy access to Asian trade routes
via the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean, and
connections to African and
European markets either via the Cape of Good Hope or the Suez Canal.
In
our new Qatar Freight Transport Report, BMI concludes that maritime cargo
volume, measured in
million tonnes, will grow on average by 8.9% per annum
over the next five years.
Various factors support this prediction. The
single most important is the size of new LNG production
expected to come
on-stream over the next few years, including the Qatargas-4 and RasGas-3
projects.
Despite the global economic slowdown, the emirate’s strong
economic growth rate, expected to average
7.1% over the 2009-2013 forecast
period, and the general growth of trade will also be contributing
factors.
The overall outlook for the freight business is encouraging.
According to our projections, air cargo will
grow at 8.2% per annum on
average, based on good performances by Qatar Airways. We estimate that
road haulage will grow by 7.3%, just a little ahead of the growth of the
economy, while pipeline
throughput should be up by 7.1% on average. Across
all modes, freight growth will average 8.7% per
annum. On the edge of a
new gas-led export boom, and with fairly open markets, Qatar leads the
Middle
East and Africa (MEA) freight transport business environment
ranking with a score of 63.3, compared to
a theoretical maximum of
100.
The total value of transport and communications GDP will rise to
US$5.56bn in nominal terms by 2013,
representing 3.8% of Qatar’s
GDP. The transport and communications sector employed 29,034 people, or
3.5% of the labour force in 2008. We see the figures rising to 32,038 by
2013.
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