Asian companies should look at opportunities in developing a vibrant capital market in the Middle East.
This was the hot topic discussed by some 450 leaders at the Asia-Middle East Investment Summit and the 3rd Annual World Islamic Banking Conference.
And Qatar, with a population less than two million people, is drawing much attention for its efforts.
Korean construction firms earn about a third of their total revenues from the Middle East while Bahrain exports one third of its oil production to Singapore.
While these trade and business linkages between Asia and the Middle East are well established, synergies between its financial markets remain largely untapped.
Wasim Saifi, global head of consumer banking at Standard Chartered Saadiq, said: "One issue is that there are still regulatory constraints in some of the markets which don't permit import and export of capital that easily. The second reason being in the Islamic finance area, you still have mostly banks being primarily the investors. You have very little of non-bank investment happening."
As a result, the capital markets are not liquid enough and do not draw many equity issuers.
But some others said as more domestic firms come up, it will help to spur capital market activity.
The Islamic Bank of Asia's CEO Toby O'Connor, said: "The Middle East is a competitive environment. There are a number of Gulf Cooperation Circle countries that are trying to develop their own standalone financial expertise and create their own hub."
One Gulf nation that has its sights firmly set on becoming a financial centre is Qatar.
The oil and gas industry accounts for over 50 per cent of its GDP, and Qatar wants to develop other industries to secure sustainable long term growth.
"Most of the markets are still classified as frontier markets in our part of the world," said Qatar Financial's acting CEO and chief strategic development officer Shashank Srivastava.
"A number of things need to be done for them to be classified and we're all working towards that. Qatar is very well advanced in its approach to developing its capital markets. The Qatar exchange has tied up with NYSE Euronext. It's going about developing its bonds trading platform in which the government is going to be issuing local currency bonds which sets the new pricing in the market."
Besides finance, sectors like education and healthcare also hold opportunities for Asian companies in Qatar.
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