On behalf of my fellow board members and myself, I am honored to welcome you at this year’s General Assembly Meeting and to present to you the Seventh Annual Report of the Board of Directors with a brief overview of the main achievements of Qatar Fuel for the fiscal year 2009.
At the global level, 2009 was an extension of the current global economic and financial crisis, whereby the beginning of the year witnessed a sharp and unprecedented fall in oil prices, which dropped to US$ 38 per barrel after peaking at US$ 148 last summer.
Despite indicators of an economic recovery during the second half of 2009, this recovery remains fragile and moving with slow and stumbling steps. This makes it difficult to draw definite conclusions about the upcoming period and the global economic and financial situation.
As far as Qatar is concerned, the impact and reverberations of the global crisis were less severe than other countries. We can confidently say that the impact of this crisis on the State of Qatar has been very limited; and our local economy continued to achieve the positive growth rates we were used to record over the past years. This is due to the adopted economic and financial policies, which were based mainly on the diversification of sources of national income, supporting the national economy, banking and financial sector, and amending and developing laws and legislations that regulate and attract investment. This reflected positively on the protection of the national economy and helped in shielding it from any potential imbalances during the worst period of our global economy.