Doha, March 23: State-owned Qatar Investment Authority invested 30 billion dollars in 2009 and plans to do the same this year, the energy-rich Gulf state’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani said on Monday.
QIA made “30 billion dollars of investments (in 2009) and we are thinking of investing the same amount this year,” Sheikh Hamad, who is also its chief executive, told reporters, without specifying where they were placed.
The sovereign wealth fund manages more than 60 billion dollars of Qatari money to complement the small Arab state’s huge oil and gas wealth.
Assets include a 17-percent stake in German carmaker Volkswagen, seven-percent share in British bank Barclays, 25-percent stake in British supermarket chain J Sainsbury, and a 14.7-percent holding in London’s Canary Wharf business centre.
It also holds a 15-percent share in the London Stock Exchange in addition to many other investments, mainly real estate, across Asia and Europe.
QIA’s aim is to diversify Qatar’s investments from oil and gas.
The Gulf state’s 900 trillion cubic feet (25 trillion cubic metres) of natural gas reserves are the third-largest in the world, and it pumps around 800,000 barrels of oil per day.
—Agencies