Local banks have scaled up their assistance to small and medium enterprises in a big way as the country looks to engage SMEs actively in nation-building and enhance private sector involvement in the economy.
The state-owned Qatar Development Bank (QDB) is the catalyst to SME development by designing a programme - Al Dhameen, which encourages banks to extend financial assistance to promising SMEs, which otherwise would have gone largely non-funded due to limited credit history, or insufficient collateral.