The Qatar Exchange hosted the 55th World Federation of Exchanges General Assembly and Annual Meeting last week.
Doha Bank CEO Rahavan Seetharaman was among the panelists who spoke on a panel addressing “Opening the Middle East Markets – The Shape of Things to Come.”
He presented a broad outlook for the global economy.
“Global economic growth has been revised down by (the International Monetary Fund) to 3.1 percent and 3.6 percent for 2015 and 2016, respectively,” he said. “Advanced economies are expected to grow by 2 percent in 2015 and 2.2 percent in 2016, respectively, while emerging economies are expected to grow by 4 percent in 2015 and 4.5 percent in 2016, respectively.”
Seetharaman said that the decline in growth reflected a slowdown in emerging markets, but that was offset by a modest pickup in activity in advanced economies, especially in the euro area.
“Extraordinary accommodative policies from major Central Banks of Advanced Economies since the global financial crisis have contributed to a compression of risk premiums across a range of markets including sovereign bonds and corporate credit, as well as a compression of liquidity and equity risk premiums,” he said.
Seetharaman expects the GCC’s market reforms should enhance liquidity and investments from local investors.
“The market reforms in GCC should shape up taking into consideration both global and regional liquidity as GCC markets expect to receive inflows from both regional and global investors,” he said. “Tightening of liquidity will impact inflows into the region”
