The Ministry of Development Planning and Statistics (MDPS) released the 10th issue of the quarterly publication “Window on Economic Statistics of Qatar”. The reference quarter of this issue is the 3rd quarter of 2014 (Q3 2014).
 The main objective of this publication is to collate all up-to-date key macroeconomic indicators; including: National Accounts and Prices, Public Finance, and Balance of Payments.
  
     The First Part of the issue contains a Dashboard that compares the economic performance of the State of Qatar with other economies and regions in terms of three indicators; namely: Real GDP growth rate, Inflation rate as measured by the CPI, and the Current Account Balance as % of GDP.
 The economic performance of Qatar, in terms of these three indicators, compares favorably with that of the other countries and regions. It is worth mentioning that Qatar’s Real GDP growth rate of 6.3% is among the highest performance rates in 2014, similar to that of Developing Asian countries, while the world GDP growth rate estimated at 3.3%, and that for advanced economies at 1.4%.
 As for the CPI inflation, Qatar inflation rate of 3.1% in 2013 is slightly lower than that of the World (3.9%), but much lower than the 9.2% recorded in the Middle East and North Africa region, and the 5.9% registered in the “Emerging markets and developing economies”.
Qatar is one of the few countries that have positive current account balance representing around 30.8% of GDP. The second part of the issue presents an analysis of the latest economic statistics published by the Economic Statistics Department of the ministry relating to Quarterly data of GDP, CPI, PPI, and Exports and Imports. Moreover, It compares the performance in the 3rd quarter of 2014 with that of the corresponding quarter of 2013, and with that of the previous quarter (Q2 of 2014).
 As for the third part of the new issue, it contains article on selected themes. The title of the article included in this issue is: “Rebasing of the Consumer Price Index from year 2007 to year 2013”. The article covered economic statistics and national accounts management experience, in the process of CPI rebasing. The results of the 2012/2013 Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES) constituted the main reason for this change.
 Furthermore, the article reviewed the key issues and aspects of this experience; which are:
 1. Updating items weights; that is the relative importance of each item in the CPI basket
 2. CPI coverage
 3. Changes in the methodology for the computation of certain items
 4. Updating the classification of goods according to the latest international recommendations in this area
 5. Review of the major shifts in the pattern of consumption For further information and data, please visit the MDPS website www.mdps.gov.qa and QALAM website www.qalm.gov.qaFor more details, click here