Leading agencies in Qatar have taken the lead to provide small business access to information and communications technology (ICT) solutions and services that would help guarantee revenue increase, a new report by Oxford Business Group (OBG) said.
OBG pointed out that programmes initiated by the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (ictQatar) and Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP), among others, supported the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
“The scale of SME operations offers significant potential for the application of IT solutions to reduce the cost of doing business and to drive sales,” OBG said.
“A number of public and private players are eyeing this potential market. Along with direct business support, many initiatives are focused on using Qatar’s IT infrastructure to support SMEs.”
OBG said that ictQatar’s ICT SME Toolkit outlined how cutting-edge IT solutions, such as cloud services, could benefit small businesses.
“The toolkit aims at advancing the Qatari business society in terms of ICT adoption, as well as advancing the ICT sector itself by enlarging the market and enhancing the quality of services. The programme has been designed to position SMEs to be at the cutting edge of ICT development,” said ictQatar’s Feda Barghouthi.
Also, OBG said that local companies were also targeting SMEs with cloud services: “Qatar’s Mannai Corporation’s ICT group, for example, is collaborating with Ooredoo and Microsoft to provide tailored cloud-based IT and communications solutions for SMEs.”
In 2014, Microsoft committed to supporting up to 10,000 SMEs with communications and data services that will enable businesses to virtually engage with other industry players.
OGB also cited ictQatar’s Digital Incubation Centre (DIC), which assists small-scale technology enterprises by offering three types of support: marketing and entrepreneurship engagement, startup assistance and shared services.
According to OBG, QSTP has played a major role in nurturing a new wave of SMEs by shifting towards supporting them to help develop an enterprise community around the IT sector.
QSTP utilises its Proof of Concept Fund (POCF) programme to stimulate growth in Qatar’s SME sector.
“We share the ambition and a belief in the economic power of SMEs. It’s no secret that a lot of Qatar’s economy is driven by oil and gas but more and more, we see wealth created in sectors other than oil and gas, and support for SMEs from the highest levels seems to be growing each day,” QSTP director for Innovation Haya al-Ghanim said.
According to OBG, Enterprise Qatar has reported that SMEs constitute 97% of the private sector, while Qatar Development Bank (QDB) has noted that 8,000 to 10,000 SMEs currently operate in the country, contributing around 15% to 17% of non-oil GDP, “markedly lower than regional and international benchmarks”.
It added that global consulting and accounting firm Deloitte had forecast that SMEs in the Middle East would have increased their expenditure on ICT services to $22bn in 2014, representing a 10% growth over the previous year.
“This spending, which is driven by an expansion in the number of SMEs operating in the region and the growing need for core IT services such as website development, e-Commerce, and cloud computing, represents 23% of the total ICT spending in the region.
“Despite the size of this market, Deloitte estimates significant potential for future growth,” OBG explained.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Peter Alagos
Quelle/Source: Gulf Times, 02.05.2015
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