Doha: Qatar's economy grew 8.7 per cent last year, less than expected but still benefiting from gas sector growth that helped it ride through the global crisis relatively unscathed, data showed yesterday.
The world's largest natural gas exporter grew at an average pace of 17.4 per cent over the past five years and it is set to largely outperform fellow Gulf oil producers such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in coming years.
"It gives a comfort that Qatar proved to be the most resilient economy in the Gulf Cooperation Council throughout the crisis," said Farah Ahmad Hersi, senior economist at Masraf Al Rayan in Doha.
"The economy is extremely robust ... and it will continue to grow at even a higher pace," he said.
The 2009 growth figure is below the 11 per cent cited by Opec member's deputy prime minister in January, revised data from the statistics office showed.
Analysts polled by Reuters had expected the cash-rich economy to grow by 9.5 per cent in 2009.
The GDP jumped by 25.4 per cent in 2008, the data showed, much higher than 15.8 per cent reported previously.
Qatar has performed better than its Gulf peers due to a massive expansion of gas facilities.
The government also moved quickly to shore up risks in the banking sector and ramped up spending.
The crisis has still hit Qatar, which pegs its currency to the dollar, with a real estate downturn helping push the country into deflation last year.
New data
Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter and the largest Arab economy, only managed to grow by 0.2 per cent last year hit by lower oil prices and slow credit growth, while the UAE and Kuwait are expected to have shrunk.
The Qatari statisticians re-introduced reporting real GDP growth and revised growth rates both in constant 2004 prices and current prices for 2005-2009, saying they were trying to collect producer prices to measure real GDP more accurately.
"These are preliminary results and are subject to revisions as more information is gathered but our estimates revisions, in future of the past data, will not be as big as we experienced," Qatar Statistics Authority said.
The QSA also said it was developing a system of short-term indicators, which will be compiled quarterly and released within a quarter after the reference quarter.
The office did not publish real GDP data by expenditure, only giving the breakdown by industrial sectors.
Economic data are hard to find across the Gulf with some oil producers lagging by months, though the situation has been improving recently.
The oil and gas sector grew by 7.7 per cent in real terms last year, accounting for 49.6 per cent of GDP.
