Establishing a business in Qatar means getting used to completely different rules and regulations as well as getting used to dealing with a differnent way of doing business. For starters, in most cases foreign entreupeneurs will not be able to have a majority ownership in their business, even when putting up 100% of the capital, and this usually means receving 49% of the profit. As one businessman explained to me:
You come up with the business plan, you find the money for the business, you run the business, you accept all the risk - and if you are lucky enough to make a profit your partner lets you keep half!
(Although, as has been pointed out before on comments on this blog, a contract can easily be set up so that you actually get more than half the profits.)
Just to make starting a business worthwhile, then, a business owner has to be able to make twice what he would be able to do so back home, even before allowing for the associated risks of setting up a business in a foreign country with alien laws and legislation, usually written in a language he or she cannot understand.
Despite this, new businesses are started all the time - coming to the richest country in the world is obviously too big a lure for entreupeneurs to resist. And some make profit, whether they are a couple of enterprising restauranteers running a juice cafe by the side of the road, or running a high profile web design company.
Our latest article, Establishing a Business in Qatar by businessman and writer David Chaddock, author of Qatar: The Business Traveller's Handbook, will be an invaluable resource for anyone thinking of setting up a business in Qatar. The article follows on from Doing Business in Qatar, and will be followed next month with an in-depth look at recruitment in Qatar.
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