Boycotts, falling oil prices and pandemic plunge Qatar into deep economic crisis

"Our initial Indian analysis that, (...) Qatar's GDP growth will be negative in 2020". This sentence, taken from a World Bank report on Qatar's economic situation, sums up the complicated financial situation it is experiencing.

Qatar expects the economy to contract this year amidst low oil prices and the coronavirus crisis.

But to this must be added the decision of several neighbouring states to boycott Doha in 2017. In June of that year, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt decided to cut off diplomatic relations with Doha because of Qatar's support for terrorism. 

In addition, the drop in travel traffic on Qatar Airways amid a pandemic that has significantly reduced the number of flights has forced the Qatari Government company to return more than $1 billion to thousands of customers.

According to Al-Ain, over the past five months, the airline has reportedly reimbursed $1.2 billion, which corresponds to 96 per cent of the reimbursements requested since March.

For its part, the Government of Qatar has issued Treasury bills to the country's debt markets worth 600 million Qatari rials ($165 million).

Qatar's markets have suffered an accelerated fall in liquidity, especially foreign markets, which has led the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank of Qatar to turn to international debt markets to provide liquidity.

The Qatar Stock Exchange general index fell by 0.47%, losing 46.60 points to close at 9767.18 points, which is not good news for the Qatari economy.