Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) chief executive Mansour Al-Mahmoud said today that the agency aims to increase investment in the United States to $ 45 billion in the next two years from about $ 30 billion currently.
He told reporters - during the second US-Qatari strategic dialogue in Doha - that the fund is looking to balance investments so that the level of US investment close to its European counterpart.
The sovereign wealth fund has created a huge European portfolio by buying stakes in companies including Deutsche Bank, Credit Suisse, the London Stock Exchange and Volkswagen.
"Our aim is to balance our portfolio," Al Mahmoud said. "At the moment, we are focusing a little on Europe, and the aim of channeling these allocations to the US market is to balance the portfolio."
Al-Mahmoud said QIA looked to key sectors in the US, such as real estate, technology and US stock exchanges.
For his part, Qatari Minister of Commerce Ali bin Ahmad Al-Kuwari said that the volume of trade exchange between his country and the United States reached 6 billion dollars from January 2018 to last October.
He added that the value of bilateral trade between Qatar and the United States has doubled in ten years, and that the United States tops the list of exporters to his country.
According to data from the Qatar Chamber of Commerce and Industry, about 650 US companies operate in the Qatari market, 117 of them with 100% US capital and 55 under the Qatar Financial Center.