Qatar, a small Middle Eastern country and peninsula off the Saudi Arabian border, is the world’s richest country. Qatar is little under 4,500 square miles in size, or about 0.12% of the size of the United States.
Personally, I would never have thought that the world’s richest country is smack dab in the middle of the Middle East. However, I discovered that the country was strategically located near a big source of petroleum deposits, which are a major source of the country’s immense wealth. Qatar is in charge of roughly 13% of the world’s oil reserves.
Qatar’s per capita GDP is $133,000 (roughly), about $20,000 higher than the next highest country due to petroleum and other lesser contributing factors including cement, ammonia, and commercial ship maintenance.
Again, this means that the entire worth of products and services in Qatar is $133,000 per person when divided by the number of people living there! That’s more than double the United States’ per capita GDP.
Mind you, Qatar is a small country with a population of only 2.88 million people. One of the key reasons that Qatar is the wealthiest country on the planet is because of this. The combination of a small population and a large amount of petroleum production ensures that they are the world’s richest country.
Regardless having this distinction, the country does not have a wealthy population. Qatar’s wealth distribution is far from even, and there are huge disparities in Qatari citizens’ wages.
In 2017, one of Qatar’s past Emirs (a Muslim military leader or local chief) was estimated to be worth $2.4 billion, while migrants interviewed in 2015 reported earning as little as $350 USD per month.
How did Qatar get such a high GDP?
Qatar’s economy is one of the world’s richest in terms of GDP per capita, consistently ranked among the top ten richest countries in world rankings issued by the World Bank, the United Nations, and the International Monetary Fund for 2015 and 2016. (IMF). Despite restrictions imposed by its neighbors, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the country’s economy has flourished.
Petroleum and natural gas are the backbones of Qatar’s economy, accounting for more than 70% of total government revenue, 60% of GDP, and nearly 85% of export earnings. Qatar has the world’s third-largest proven natural gas reserves and is the world’s second-largest natural gas exporter.
Why is Qatar the wealthiest country?
It’s not just the oversupply and demand problem of last year, or the exacerbating effect of COVID-19: oil prices have been falling steadily and sometimes dramatically since the mid-2010s, notwithstanding the recent rebound. A Qatari citizen’s per-capita GDP was over $143,222 in 2014, “only” $97,846 a year later, and is still barely above that level now.
Despite the fact that the country’s oil, gas, and petrochemical reserves are vast, and its population is small (only 2.8 million), this marvel of ultramodern architecture, luxury shopping malls, and excellent cuisine has topped the list of the world’s richest nations for the past two decades.
Despite the fact that just roughly 12% of the population is Qatari, the country, like many other Gulf states, saw COVID-19 spread rapidly among low-income migrant workers living in packed quarters in the early months of the pandemic. Despite the fact that Qatar has been subjected to numerous quarantines, curfews, and lockdowns, the country has one of the highest percentages of positive cases in the area.
Despite this, the economy has showed some resilience (it shrank by only 3.5 percent in 2020, grew by about 2% in 2021, and is currently expected to revive due to increased gas output and investment in preparation for the 2022 World Cup).
Is Qatar the country with the highest GDP per capita?
It is regarded as a crucial indication of a country’s economic strength, with a positive change indicating economic growth. Qatar’s GDP per capita was estimated to be around 66,621.69 US dollars in 2018. Qatar, by the way, is currently one of the countries with the highest GDP per capita.
Why is Qatar’s Gross National Income so high?
Qatar has the world’s third-largest natural gas reserves, and it has substantially invested in infrastructure to liquefy and export it, as well as diversify its economy, without going as far as Dubai. Qatar has attracted global financial corporations as well as American university satellite campuses. The government is investing heavily on infrastructure, such as a deepwater port, an airport, and a railway network, in order to make the country a better business and World Cup host in 2022.
The mighty minnow Luxembourg comes in second on our list, with a per capita GDP of slightly over $81,000 on a purchasing-power parity basis. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the country of half a million inhabitants became a financial center, thanks in part to strong banking secrecy regulations that gave it a reputation as a tax haven. The city-state of Singapore comes in third, with a GDP (PPP) per capita of about $56,700, and flourishes as a technological, manufacturing, and finance powerhouse.
Why is Qatar so impoverished?
Migrant flows to Qatar have surged since the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) announced Qatar will host the 2022 World Cup. Qatar has been trying to attract thousands of workers to its shores since 2010 to help with the construction of stadiums, hotels, and other infrastructure needed for the tournament. Migrants from all around the Persian Gulf region, as well as South Asia, have rushed into the country to meet this need. Migrants sought to get out of a bad situation and find a job with a steady salary. In fact, India alone supplied 700,000 laborers. However, migrant poverty has become a major concern in Qatar.
Migrants in Qatar
According to Human Rights Watch, the migrant labor force has surpassed 2 million people, accounting for about 95% of the workforce. Despite being the world’s second richest country, with a GDP per capita of $124,500 in 2017, Qatar’s widespread poverty, particularly among migrants, is due to a lack of labor rights.
The kafala sponsorship system is to blame for the persistence of poverty among workers. Migrants must apply for visas from employers, which they frequently pay for through recruiters. Even if workers are able to pay their way into a job, businesses maintain extensive control over what they may do. Employers frequently seize workers’ passports, preventing them from fleeing abusive situations. Furthermore, some employees have left with little or no remuneration. Hundreds of thousands of people have been forced to live in work camps, where disease and poverty are common.
Solutions
Qatar’s government introduced legislation in 2017 and 2018 aimed at reducing migrant poverty in the country. The government created a temporary minimum wage for migrant workers in October 2017 in the goal of improving their working circumstances. Amnesty International stated a year later, in October 2018, that Qatar had established a support and insurance fund to protect workers from missed pay.
However, according to Human Rights Watch, both of these measures were applied unevenly and consequently had little impact. Employers still retain a lot of power over their employees, and inadequate enforcement has kept the kafala system in place.
Qatar announced two additional measures on August 30, 2020, to address this issue. The first was a boost to the current minimum wage. Employers must also offer workers a stipend for food and lodging, according to the regulation, which goes into effect in January 2021. The second was a law that allowed employees to leave their jobs without their employers’ approval. Workers may be able to flee hazardous working circumstances and find better work as a result of their mobility.
Such measures may even save lives, as even the most conservative estimates suggest that at least 1,200 people have died while working on World Cup stadiums owing to hazardous working conditions. These measures have been praised by international watchdogs. According to Amnesty International, these tiny initiatives offer some hope that migrant poverty and worker abuse in Qatar may soon be on the wane.
Is Qatar wealthier than the United States?
Perusing the list of the world’s wealthiest countries is both enlightening and motivating, but it’s also useful to look at the statistics by continent. A list of the extremely wealthy countries on each of the six inhabited continents, for example, would look somewhat like this:
- Luxembourg ($118,001), Ireland ($102,390), and Switzerland ($93,520) are the richest European countries in 2021.
- Singapore ($97,057), Qatar ($61,790), and Israel ($49,840) are the richest Asian countries in 2021.
- United States of America ($63,416), Canada ($52,790), and Puerto Rico ($34,140) are the richest countries in North America in 2021.
- Australia ($62,620), New Zealand ($48,350), and Palau ($11,840) are the top three countries in the Oceania region.
- Uruguay ($16,970), Chile ($16,800), and Argentina ($9,930) are the richest countries in South America in 2021.
- Seychelles ($13,140), Mauritius ($8,680), and Equatorial Guinea ($8,630) are the richest African countries in 2021.
Is Qatar set to become the world’s richest country in 2021?
What is the world’s richest country? Qatar is the world’s richest country, a small country that benefits economically from massive petroleum reserves. The oil industry accounts for 85% of the country’s exports and 70% of its national earnings.
Is Qatar the world’s safest country?
Information about the news. According to a global database (Numbeo), the State of Qatar has continued to dominate the list of the safest and most crime-free countries in the world during the first half of 2020, and it is one of 133 countries included in the assessment.