(MENAFN- The Peninsula) The ceremonial launch and the signing ceremony establishing the first offshore Renminbi (RMB) clearing centre in Qatar, for the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) region will be held on April 14.
H E Sheikh Abdulla bin Saoud Al Thani, Governor of Qatar Central Bank, Gao Youzhen, China's Ambassador to Qatar and Jiang Jianqing, Chairman, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China will attend the event.
Cui Bin, Head of the Economic and Commercial Office of the Embassy of China in Qatar yesterday told The Peninsula that he cannot tell when the RMB clearing centre will exactly begin its formal operations. The ceremonial launch will be held on April 14, he said.
Having a renminbi clearing bank in Qatar would not only serve the Chinese currency fund flows in and out of the country through trade and investment, but will help Qatar attract business from other Middle Eastern countries in the region to pursue trade through Qatar.
According to analysts, the clearing deal with China appears to represent a win for Qatar in its competition with other Gulf financial centres, particularly Dubai, which is the region's largest banking hub.
Cui said the economic and trade cooperation between Qatar and China has experienced a rapid development over the last few years. The bilateral trade value has increased sharply from $400m in 2004 to $10.6bn in 2014, a twenty-six fold in 10 years. In the same time, the cooperation for project contracting also expanded a lot, by the end of last year.
Chinese companies have signed more than $8bn projects contracts in Qatar, involving civil construction, roads and bridges, ports and telecommunications. Besides, cooperation in the field of financial service, aviation and tourism is also processing well, which has become a new cooperation highlight. Qatar has become one of our most important business partners in the Middle East and the Gulf region. Currently an estimated 100 Chinese companies are operating in Qatar, of them 30 are major companies.
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