After seeing an influx of more than 100,000 people into Qatar during the first few months of this year, population growth in the country appears to have leveled off in April, according to new government figures.
At the end of last month, Qatar’s population stood at 2,342,725 – nearly 4,000 fewer people than were here in March 2015, the state’s Ministry of Development, Planning and Statistics reported.
Though the dip is small, it reflects the first time in five years that the population has not increased between the months of March and April.
Since the beginning of 2015, Qatar’s population has grown by some 118,142 people.
However, the 5.31 percent increase from January to the end of April reflected a slower growth rate than was observed at the same time last year. At that time, the population grew 6.88 percent, or by 138,870 more people.
Besides last month, the last time Qatar saw population figures drop was between December 2014 and January this year, when there were nearly 11,000 fewer people here, likely due to the winter holidays.
Trends
For the last four years, population figures have typically risen during the first six months of the year.
The last time there was a drop in numbers between March and April was in 2010, when the number of people in the country fell by about 7,000 people to 1.67 million.
While MDPS does not give any official explanations contextualizing the statistics, the latest numbers follow reports that several oil and gas firms have recently instituted hiring freezes or are letting staff go.
Plummeting international oil prices have led many companies to reign in their spending and their head counts.
Billions of dollars worth of mega-projects, including Industries Qatar’s Al Sajeel petrochemical plant and, more recently, the al-Karaana petrochemical facility planned by Qatar Petroleum and Royal Dutch Shell, have been scrapped or postponed.
However, the year-on-year figures show a rise in the state’s population of more than 187,000 people – up 8.69 percent from the end of April 2014 to the end of last month.
Last September, QNB published a report predicting that the state’s population would grow on average by 7.4 percent annually in the coming years, reaching 2.5 million by 2016.
Thoughts?
I miss 2005.
Good ol Days 🙂 those years were such a wonderful dream.
Why, was that the last time you got laid?
So true.
1989, when I first came here, was as close to paradise as it can get.
Probably because people are unhappy with the traffic rules and kafala system
You are really “special”.
^ This
Kafala system was there when the population tripled in the past 10 years, did they love it back then? Bro just give us a break from bad analysis of situations, you make a fool of your self specially when your name and pic is beside your comment..
Troll
Another useless comment. Please give us a break as he said 🙂
Well said.
Deleting for personal attack, and subsequent thread.
Fair enough, but censuring sarcasm gets kind of iffy.
Totally predictable after the unannounced hiring freeze and the standby on multiple projects. I’d consider this a positive development rather than a negative one, even though in economical terms it signals a slow in the growth
The landlords better start knocking down houses so they can keep increasing the rents.
LOL
I have a question for you: if I am not mistaken weren’t you the one who once posted the link of a very interesting documentary of Qatar in the 60s or 70s maybe where it showed how the Indian workers here in Qatar were living in small houses and how children were going to school together with locals….? am I wrong or do I remember well? Cheers!
why sweat over small stuff? when living in qatar gets tough, expats leave in droves, just like back in late 90’s. Then there is new torrent of warm bodies to replenish the fallen who will be paid a better pay to offset increased rent. The local companies and their owners will foot the bill. Of course, there will be casualties!
Look out for my white LC doing donuts on the cornish intersection with my cheetah riding shot gun …
You should be picking up passengers and taking them to HIA as your good deed….
I assume your comment is targeted at this kind of audience:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvGzJjQgN5k
Hiring freeze, cancelled projects, but surprising if it wasn’t just a blip given the number of infrastructure and WC2022 projects still on the books. However, the worlds economies are heating up and people are starting to leave the Middle East to take jobs back home – in short it’s no longer the last resort for a job it used to be which attracted so many professionals during the financial crisis. The chances of getting a work/life balance are now much higher.
True, Saudi would be a last resort for me.
I do enjoy the warmth and the tax free salary though
They should keep pretending of being the richest when things are going wrong..
thank god . im hoping for more . like at least 50 thousand ,
It is very possible but to get a figure like 50 thousand you need to cancel some of the construction projects, you could probably cut the population by up to half a million if Qatar really wanted to but you would have to accept a lower standard of living. Still very high compared to the rest of the world but lower than now.
The landlords would not be very happy though with the situation when rental crashes and most of them are the government, so I can’t see it happening.
it has to happen , every one is suffering , we can mange
Well the CMC elections are coming up, vote for a candidate that will lobby the government to reduce expat numbers. I’m sure you will get a lot of support from the Qatari community, Qatari business owners would probably not be so keen.
Personally I would support a reduction in numbers as well and the cancellation of a few projects but I am not citizen so I don’t have a voice here.
Tip of the iceberg with significant across the board cutbacks in budgets and large numbers of projects postponed or shelved, most of which have not yet filtered through the economy. Cutting people is the easiest, albeit not necessarily the most prudent, way to deliver quick savings.