Growth of businesses in Qatar’s non-energy private sector reached an eight-month high as employment grew for the 15th month in a row.

Inflationary pressures remained muted in the country and the headline figure of the Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) Authority Purchasing Managers’ index (PMI) reached 53.6 in May, jumping from 52.0 in April, with anything above 50.0 signalling improvement in business conditions.

The report showed incoming new work expanded at the sharpest rate in eight months, and faster than the long-run survey trend.

There were faster business expansions across all four sectors #led again by wholesale, retail, and services.

Companies were still able to reduce the volume of outstanding work during the month and confidence regarding the next 12 months strengthened.

Purchasing activity increased at the second-fastest rate in ten months and lead times continued to improve, however, as firms reported building supplier relationships.

Cost pressures were broadly stable as average purchase prices declined, offsetting higher wages. Prices charged for goods and services increased for the second time in the past seven months, but at a slower rate than the previous hike in March.

Financial services

Financial services’ business activity and new business indexes rose to 12-and eight-month highs of 60.9 and 59.1, respectively.

Prices set by financial services’ companies were broadly unchanged since April, following a four-month sequence of discounting.

Yousuf Mohamed Al-Jaida, CEO of QFC Authority said the results were indicative that the non-energy sector had ‘moved up a gear’. “Both the wholesale and retail and the services sectors continued to drive expansion in May, and financial services remained a bright spot.

“Although there was a rise in output prices in May, inflationary pressures broadly remained in check and suppliers’ delivery times continued to improve.”

(Writing by Imogen Lillywhite; editing by Daniel Luiz)

imogen.lillywhite@lseg.com