Geneva International

The Qatar Development Bank (QDB) and the International Trade Centre (ITC) announced that they are scaling up their collaboration. As part of a new cooperation agreement QDB will provide $1 million to ITC towards the development and competitiveness of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) in Qatar.
The two organizations will work jointly to diversify the exports of Qatari enterprises and improve the visibility of Qatari non-oil and non-gas sectors.
Abdulaziz Bin Nasser Al Khalifa, Chief Executive Officer of QDB, and ITC Executive Director Arancha González signed a Letter of Declaration on the sidelines of ITC’s annual Joint Advisory Group (JAG) meeting in Geneva.
To supporting Qatari businesses to diversify out of the hydrocarbon sector, the funding will also provide support for the Global Trade Helpdesk, an initiative launched by ITC, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). The focus will be on sustaining the quality and transparency of trade-related information, strengthening public-private dialogue and transforming this data into intelligence.
Stepping up its support for Qatari MSMEs, the project will work to better integrate them into the global business-to-business e-commerce markets. One focus would be through establishing a barcode standard in Qatar that will encourage companies to produce goods conforming to international market standards. This will ease access to new national, regional and international markets and improve product safety by ensuring better traceability along the global supply chain.

In addition to providing support to Qatar in realizing its development objectives, the partners are committed to explore further opportunities for future collaboration, in Qatar and elsewhere in the region.

Ekaterina Pinchevskaya