Looking East Saturday, 04 February 2012 01:26

The Issue: Largely unscathed by the world financial turmoil that has mainly hit the west, Qatar is now increasingly looking eastward to keep its LNG-fuelled economy as vibrant as ever.

As the emerging economies of Asia perform enviably and open up new vistas for participation of the rest of world, Qatar is one of the few countries to get in there right in time to explore opportunities in these dynamic, high-growth economies.

The Emir, H H Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani’s just-concluded Asia trip coincided with Qatar’s commitment to investing in multi-billion dollar projects in the Asian economies.

The year 2011 saw a huge surge in Qatar’s trade and investments flow to the Asian economies. China’s bilateral trade volume with Qatar soared a whopping 72 percent to $5.1bn in 2011 over the previous year.

The latest in the Qatari-Chinese deal is a $10bn partnership agreement in the hydrocarbon sector. Qatar has also boosted its trade and investment relations with Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Indonesia, among other countries in the region.

Analysts expect that in the coming years oil demand will be the determining factor in the shift in trade to the emerging markets. They suggest that whereas demand for oil would likely grow by only 0.1 percent over the next five years in the OECD, the growth in demand in Asia could reach 4.4 percent.

In the emerging markets as a whole, the demand for oil is anticipated to rise 3.9 percent a year. A latest Economist Intelligence Study forecasts that 41 per cent of the world’s GDP will come from countries that are currently defined as emerging markets.

By 2015, emerging markets are expected to generate just under two-thirds of global economic growth. Latest data on Qatar’s LNG export to Japan underpin the theory.

Global energy market reports say the volume of energy export from Qatar to the West is increasingly going down, where as the volume is steadily climbing up in the case of Asia.

Japan imported an extra 3.17million tons of LNG from Qatar between March and November 2011 compared with the same period in 2010. Other Asian countries also saw increased appetite for LNG last year, importing 69 percent more. Britain is particularly threatened by the prospect of lower Qatari LNG supplies to Europe. The emerging trend reflects fast-changing economic relationships between Qatar and its traditional trade partners and speaks volumes about the country’s ability to foresee the future.

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