DAVOS, Switzerland: Qatar’s preparations for the 2022 football World Cup are fully on track after a boycott by its Gulf neighbors briefly disrupted fixed supply lines last year, its foreign minister said.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani, who is also deputy prime minister, said Qatar’s economy was now growing much faster than anticipated and the huge gas exporter was well prepared to withstand the crisis in relations with its neighbors.
“We are confident we will host the best World Cup in the Arab world. It will represent the whole Arab region,” Sheikh Mohammed said in an interview during the World Economic Forum in Davos.
“The government has already overcome the disruptions which happened to supplies at the beginning of the crisis and we have introduced alternative routes. There is no disruption at the moment,” he said, adding he had heard no signals from FIFA that it was planning to change the venue of the World Cup.
The diplomatic crisis, in which Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE and Egypt have boycotted Qatar, erupted last summer when the four countries cut diplomatic, transport and trade ties with Qatar, accusing it of financing terrorism.
Qatar’s economy has been growing faster than expected despite the boycott and Sheikh Mohammed said Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund, one of the world’s largest, was expanding investments abroad despite expectations it would shrink and divest.
“We have built strong resilience, we are opening up new trade lines, we have built a new port,” he said. “Our investment fund is seeking new investment opportunities... and tapping new continents. We have plans for Africa, which we will launch soon, and next year we have plans for the Central Asian region.”