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12:56 25.12.2024 •
Photo: Bloomberg
Qatar’s $500bn sovereign wealth fund is preparing to deploy its cash more aggressively ahead of a petrodollar windfall that could ultimately double its size.
Mohammed Al-Sowaidi, the Qatar Investment Authority’s new chief executive (photo), told ‘The Financial Times’ the fund expected to “do bigger-ticket deals” and invest with “more frequency” as it embarked on a review of its investment strategy.
“We have to be more aggressively deploying and finding ways where we could actually achieve more returns than the perceived risk,” Sowaidi said. “You review overall your allocation policies, you look into global trends and you make some calls on the future forecasts and you see how you optimise deployment.”
As the fund prepares to step up its deal flow, the QIA is bullish on the US, where it has increased its exposure significantly over the past decade, as well as in the UK and Asia, Sowaidi said, with a focus on technology, artificial intelligence, healthcare, real estate and infrastructure.
“You can see the US is spending time on . . . creating more efficient fiscal policies, regulation and regulatory environment. The market perceives that it will be accelerated under the Trump administration,” Sowaidi said.
Qatar, one of the world’s top LNG exporters and wealthiest nations in per capita terms, has spent almost $30bn to increase production capacity at its vast North Field gasfield from 77mn to 126mn tonnes a year by 2027.
State producer QatarEnergy announced further expansion plans in February, meaning overall production capacity is forecast to rise almost 85 per cent from current levels before the end of the decade.
Its Golden Pass joint venture in the US with ExxonMobil, which is expected to add another 16mn to 18mn tonnes of LNG a year to the market, will come online late next year.
The IMF estimated in a report two years ago that by 2027 the expansion was expected to raise the small Gulf state’s real GDP by 5.7 per cent and add about 3.5 per cent of GDP in export receipts a year.
The QIA had been expanding its investments in China, and continued to look to invest in the Asian powerhouse, Sowaidi said, while “also respecting the regulations”.
He said the fund was “trying to be out of this sensitive technology space that could potentially have issues with global regulators”.
“We reviewed areas where we think there could be potential complications with the US or with Europe, and we tried to reduce exposure,” Sowaidi added. “We have a sizeable exposure in Asia and we are ramping it up. We think east Asia presents a great opportunity, in Japan, for example, and South Korea.”
…Just note LNG is the issue. Despite the fact that the western press is actively pushing the idea of construction gas pipeline via Syria.
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