Saleh Thabit Al Awaidy, Chief Operating Officer of Qatar National Bank spoke about his branch operation and performance in 2008. He gave his opinion on the global recession, and the reasons why Oman was spared most of the fallouts. Awaidy started by shedding some light on his branch operation and performance in the last year, saying "We have started our operation in 2008, our head office is in Qatar and it is one of the biggest banks in Qatar.
We have started to stabilize our operations and support our corporate customers. We are entering the market slowly and carefully, and we are establishing a selective banking operations and providing capital for large multimillion projects. Nevertheless, when we started we had to face the economic crisis. In spite of all that, Oman’s economy is very stable, we choose to go ahead and start financing projects. We are only financing huge corporate customers. Our branch broke even in the last quarter of 2008, as Oman is a very good and stable economy. It is very easy to make money in this country. Oman has a very good economy with many mega projects underway".
Then the COO spoke about the global recession, and why Oman was spared most of the fallouts, stating "It is there and it has a big impact everywhere but Oman handled it very well, in such a way that the economy did not even falter, it was just a small pinch that most businesses did not feel it. For example, most of the hotels still have more than 70% occupancy. I believe that this was due to the wisdom of the government which started mega projects, and their cautious gradual growth strategy." The government built a solid foundation, and took care of evolving human resources. "Consequently, we are slowly building our country, learning form the mistakes of our neighboring countries, which went on an exponential growth strategy," he added. Of course, there are necessary infrastructures to be built, such as roads, airports, and housing, which have a tangible impact and benefit which will help Omanis and increase the revenues and investment.
