Qatar has no need to sell bonds after first quarter surplus

Qatar has no need to tap bond markets for budget-balancing reasons after a better than expected oil price boosted its revenues, Finance Minister Ali Al-Kuwari said.

He told Bloomberg TV that the country would only consider raising fresh debt for opportunistic reasons such as attractive yields.

“When we did the budget we ran very conservative numbers (based on) $40 oil and the expectation was around 34 billion Qatari riyals of deficit for the year however we had an excellent first quarter and oil prices moved in the right direction,” he said.

The minister said the country continued to focus on diversification and was studying the possible future introduction of value added tax.

Al-Kuwairi said that investigations into former finance minister Ali Shareef Al-Emadi were continuing and that once the outcome of those enquiries was known it would be made public.

Al-Emadi was arrested earlier this year over allegations of abuse of power and misuse of public funds.

“Qatar has a very transparent legal system and once we have the full details of the investigation and outcome I am sure the public will know what is going on,” said Al-Kuwari.