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Qatar Water Report Q3 2010
Business Monitor International, July 2010, Pages: 48
Qatar Water Report provides industry professionals and strategists, corporate analysts, utilities associations, government departments and regulatory bodies with independent forecasts and competitive intelligence on Qatar's water industry.
Qatar is a small country in terms of population, but it is one of the world’s largest water consumers on a per capita basis. More than half of the country’s water goes to the agricultural sector, but increasing demand is coming from the country’s growing urban population.
It is a country with limited and declining groundwater resources, and the state is therefore investing heavily in desalination plants. It has one of the longest-standing desalination programmes in the Middle East and so has garnered much experience in the sector.
Much of the expansion in Qatar’s desalination programme is being achieved through independent water and power projects (IWPPs). The largest of these is the Ras Girtas project currently under construction in the Ras Laffan industrial complex. A further IWPP is said to be under consideration, and the country is also widening its technological horizons, with a pilot reverse osmosis desalination plant due to be built and solar-powered desalination plans under consideration.
Qatar has been open to foreign investment for several years and is regarded as a relatively safe investment destination, with major international companies currently active in the sector. The US$3.9bn Ras Girtas project managed to achieve its funding goals in mid-2008, despite the already rocky state of international capital markets, indicating investor confidence. The global economic downturn has hindered the pace of development since then to some extent, but signs of improvement in the regional investment climate will benefit the sector.
Qatar will need to build on this reputation to attract more funding and technical know-how, as it will need to expand its water supply, wastewater treatment and power capacity over the next five years if output is to keep ahead of growing demand. Water demand in the summer months of 2009 rose 7% compared with the previous year.
The Qatar Electricity and Water Company (QEWC) is the state’s main investment vehicle in the water and power sectors. The government holds a 43% stake in the company, with the rest held by private and public investors. It says its profits and revenues have been on the rise, as income from joint ventures feed through. QEWC is involved in many of the large projects taking place in the country and so is a key partner for other investors. It now owns and manages almost 1mn m3 per day (m3/d) of water capacity and around 3 gigawatts (GW) of power output. It also has interests in IWPPs, producing some 750,000 m3/d of water and more than 6GW of power. When Ras Girtas becomes operational in 2011, the country will have around 1.4mn m3/d of desalinated [Query: I can’t see this in the tables – is it tabled data?] water capacity, as well as power generating capacity of 9GW.
The Public Works Authority, Ashghal, manages the development of wastewater and drainage projects in the country, and is responsible for contracting firms to work on its growing slate of projects. Ashghal is considering outsourcing the operation and maintenance of some elements of its wastewater network – the first time it has done this.
The water sector is regulated by the Qatar General Electricity and Water Corporation (Kahramaa), which was established in 2000 as an independent corporation operating on a commercial basis. Kahramaa also owns projects and develops strategy for the sector. Kahramaa is also responsible for setting water tariffs, which have been heavily subsidised for decades. There has been some talk of making them more representative of costs, but little action has been taken on this front yet.
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