After having completed 2 weeks in Qatar and now having a fuller picture of it in my head I can now grasp what life is like there better. First off from a business standpoint of the companies that we visited, 2 of them were government owned and dealt with dealing with private local businesses and the other 2 were private businesses. The 2 government owned businesses dealt with food production and one of them, called Doha Dates, would take in batches of produce from farmers like dates and process them further and would also take in fresh produce to sell. The interesting thing about it being government owned is that to me it did not have a business feel of being government owned inside, without knowing I would have thought it was privately owned. The same feeling was for that of the other government owned company, Qafta Farms, which fully produced food in its greenhouse rooms. It was interesting to note that since they were government companies, both were not running on a profit but a loss. As far as the other 2 private companies, an oil company called SLB and a cable company called Doha Cables, these seemed like they were on a much faster grove of work and more manpower to run the locations, though this is expected of a huge oil company and a company producing these huge cables which can be 3-5 km long. As far as from a business standpoint, these private companies had a majority of there markers overseas and dealt with large companies to sell their products to while the government owned companies were just concerned on making sure Qatar produces food for their citizens (instead of relying too much on imports for food) without allowing local farmers to go out of business by absorbing their losses for them.
As far as wrapping up my final thoughts on Qatar I think it is a really interesting and unique country in having 85-90% of the population as majority male expats to work for a few to many years and then head back to where they came from. To me it seems like any country’s population would be terrified if suddenly 85-90% of the population were younger foreign males, but the Qataris have been able to make it work and make their country very successful in doing so. The infrastructure of Qatar is easily some of the top in the world, looking significantly nicer than that of the USA. Even though Qatar is extraordinarily safe it comes with a cost of seemingly too many surveillance cameras. The experience of being in the Middle East was really cool and I would definitely do it again if I had the chance, it was really cool to see a region of the world that is viewed as being dangerous but in reality it seems safer than the USA, plus the food was the favorite that I’ve ever had!
