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Qatar's Central Bank predicted in August 2019 that the country's economic development will accelerate over the following two years on the back of steady oil prices and continuing robust exports. Between 2018 and 2020, the GDP is anticipated to expand at an average pace of 2.8 percent, with the fiscal surplus declining to 4.35 billion riyals in 2019 from 15.1 billion riyals in 2018.

Finance in Islam

The Islamic finance sector had increasing activity in 2008 and is projected to continue growing into 2009 as investors become interested in more complex financial solutions. Along with Islamic banks such as Qatar Islamic Bank (QIB), Qatar International Islamic Bank (QIIB), and newcomer Masraf Al Rayyan, conventional banks have been expanding into the sharia-compliant sector, and have come to regard an Islamic subsidiary as a near need for market survival. Islamic banks now account for the lion's share of sharia-compliant business, while conventional banks are making strenuous efforts to increase their market share. Both Islamic banks and their Islamic subsidiaries performed admirably well in the first three quarters of 2008, when overall financing activity rose by 70.6 percent over the previous year's comparable period. The global financial crisis, on the other hand, halted this expansion. In 2008, poor market circumstances resulted to a significant slowdown in Islamic bond, or sukuk, activity in the Persian Gulf. However, some areas, such as Islamic insurance, or takaful, have remained relatively stable. Overall, growth obstacles persist, including a shortage of trained personnel to fulfill the rising demand for sharia-compliant financial services. freelancer

Market for capital

The World Bank assessed Qatar's listed firms' stock market capitalization at $95,487 million in 2007. As 2008 drew to a conclusion, no capital market, including Qatar's, was immune to the impact from the sub-prime crisis. Nonetheless, there is great hope that Qatar's stock exchange, the Doha Securities Market (DSM), would stay reasonably robust to continued global turmoil. It has followed the same peak-trough pattern as many others throughout the world, peaking in mid-2008 and then plunging in late 2008 and early 2009. Between December 2006 and July 2008, the DSM Index increased by about 117 percent before being wiped out by the global financial crisis. The DSM lost almost 40% of its value in the first three months of 2009. To avert additional losses, the government stated in February 2009 that it would intervene and acquire problematic bank shares totaling around 10% of the market's capitalization. The action boosted investor confidence and is expected to avert additional market declines. The plan to establish a single unified regulator to supervise all banking and financial services as early as 2010 is regarded as another positive move that would improve the financial system.