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DOHA: The Qatar Central Bank (QCB) yesterday reported a comprehensive overview of Qatar’s monetary and institutional developments, highlighting key achievements that strengthened the financial sector’s overall resilience and inclusiveness.
In its 2025 Annual Report, the central bank reported that financial stability remained robust throughout the year due to forward-looking risk assessments, expanded stress testing, and proactive oversight, ensuring that banking capital and liquidity buffers stayed well above regulatory thresholds.
The central bank optimised its reserve management, with official reserves climbing to QR202.2bn by the end of 2025. Within the reserve portfolio, gold accounted for an increasingly significant share, surging to 28.9 percent from 7.9 percent at the end of 2021, while
overall reserve coverage of currency issued reached 995.4 percent.
However, it lowered key policy rates by a cumulative 75 basis points to maintain confidence in the currency peg, aligning with macroeconomic requirements and transmitting fully and immediately to the interbank market.
Regulatory and supervisory structures were further bolstered through a new risk-based methodology, which included 15 onsite summary reviews covering all eight Qatari national banks alongside 84 special inspection missions.
Meanwhile, progress continued under the Third Financial Sector Strategy (3FSS), where QCB leads 153 of the 283 total projects; a total of 111 projects across the strategy were completed in its third consecutive year of execution.
National payment and settlement systems saw substantial usage as the QCB-operated QA-RTGS settled nearly 497,000 high-value transactions worth QR10.26 trillion.
The system was further enhanced by a foreign currency transfer service allowing banks to settle and transfer US dollar transactions locally through QCB accounts.
Capital markets deepened as QCB launched the second phase of the Primary Dealers Framework, holding its first auction in August 2025.
Government bond and sukuk issuances reached QR23.3bn during the year, bringing total outstanding instruments to QR121.4bn.
Innovation and human capital were core drivers of the central bank’s strategy throughout 2025.
Licensed FinTech entities expanded to 14 following the publication of 10 key regulations, with sandbox programmes drawing over 90 applications and admitting six firms across regulatory and express streams.
To support workforce growth across the sector, QCB delivered 104 specialised training programmes to 4,664 participants while institutionalising a formal recruitment framework and a QCB-led learning platform.
The 2025 Annual Report underscores the Qatar Central Bank’s unwavering dedication to a stable, innovative, and resilient financial sector.
The progress made in regulatory frameworks, reserve management, digital transformation, and capacity building positions the country well for future challenges and opportunities.
Officials added that Qatar aims to foster sustainable economic growth and maintain the highest standards of financial integrity.
