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Qatar - Digital adoption in Qatar is set to grow, driving the growth of information and communications technology (ICT) sector and enabling the country to solidify the foundation of a new knowledge-based economy powered by digital tools.
ICT can be the power engine that brings forth new ways of living and doing business, sustainably in an environment where Qatar can further lead and grow according to Qatar’s ICT Landscape and Digital Trends 2022 report, which was developed based on CRA’s large-scale strategic research study and is the first comprehensive study for the ICT sector focusing on its supply-side. It provides extensive sector data and information, as well as exploring gaps, challenges, opportunities for future ICT sector growth, and its potential to enable the digital economy.
The private sector has the potential to increase its ICT spending as a result of global digitisation trends and local government push (for example, TASMU) with national champions presently being and continuing to be key drivers of digitalisation efforts. Qatar has utilised government impetus and government ownership to drive the early growth of the digital economy enabled by ICTs. In the next phase of development towards a knowledge-based economy, Qatar will increasingly focus on sustaining the digitalisation of the private sector through legislative, regulatory, financial and other types of support, the report noted.
Qatar’s ICT industry will continue to evolve within an international context of a dynamic technology and digital domain characterised by powerful trends.
Digitisation continues to expand in traditional industries while new digital segments emerge and grow; advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) are gaining traction driven by data proliferation as are cloud solutions and smart environments.
Qatar’s National Vision 2030 highlights the transformative role that the ICT sector must play in realising this ambitious future. The State is consistently ranked ahead of most regional peers in the Future Readiness pillar of IMD Digital Competitiveness Index. The index measures the capacity and readiness of 63 economies to adopt digital technologies as key drivers of economic transformation.
The Future Readiness pillar assesses a country’s performance in terms of key elements enabling future enabling; adaptive attitudes (for example: e-participation, smartphone penetration), business agility (for example: knowledge transfer, use of big data and analytics) and IT integration (e-government, cybersecurity).
The global digitalisation trend is reflected prominently in Qatar. The evidence from the CRA ICT Sector Survey 2022 suggests that the degree of digitalisation in the country is continuously increasing thanks to improvements in infrastructure, increasing investment by the private sector and ambitious government-driven initiatives.
Despite this growth further progress is required to position Qatar as a global digital leader. Closing the gap will drive further digitalization of traditional industries while also supporting newer, born digital segments.
Fitch Solutions expects Qatar’s IT market to grow at 5.5 percent CAGR in the period between 2021 to 2025. This rate is higher than estimated overall real GDP growth the highest projections from IMF and the World Bank forecast an average growth rate between 3 percent and 4.5 percent.
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