INTERVIEW: Abdullah Hassan Al-Khater
Vice President & Chief Strategic Procurement Office at Barzan Holdings
How important is the Southeast Asia market for Barzan Holdings?
Barzan Holdings is relatively young company compared to the other companies in the defence industry. When we established the company back in 2016, our aim was to first serve the Qatar armed forces. However, this was our initial mandate and today we are looking to expand globally. In our planning process, we came to the decision that Southeast Asia would be the No.1 market that we would like to target. This was done, keeping in mind that many of the other defence markets, such as those in the USA and Europe are already saturated.
We believe that the Southeast Asia market is a very promising market for Barzan Holdings. We are keen to grow our relationships in this region and we have excellent diplomatic relations with the countries here. We believe that we can capitalise on that relationship and reach out to different countries around this region, and we hope to see success.
With regards to Day 1 of the show, it was fantastic for us, we met with several different delegations from different parts of the world and were able to showcase our products. So, I would say our first participation at Defence & Security and our first day here was exciting and very successful.
What makes Barzan Holdings well suited to meet the demands of countries in the region?
A lot of countries are now changing their strategy to become more and more independent. They want to establish their own local defence industry and local defence services. We have gone through these very same experiences at Barzan Holdings over the last five years and we believe that we can bring that experience here and share it with various countries. This will also be an added advantage working with different countries in the region.
It is also an added advantage to have a good political relationship with a nation, as that helps open a door for business. Greater dialogue with different Government entities will help us establish relationships and take it a step further to establish partnership or joint ventures in the future. A recent example of this was our establishment of a joint venture with Indonesia, with whom we have a very strong and enduring political relationship. Our joint venture with Indonesia was built on the back of discussions that we held for two years.
Please provide an update on the current market situation at Barzan Holdings and the way forward?
With the current global political situation and what is going on around the world, we are also seeing a positive shift in defence budgets. Countries as far afield as Germany and Japan have raised their defence budgets significantly for example. More upward shifts in defence spending such as this, will lead to growing demand for our industry and we view this as an opportunity for us to grow and have a strong partnership with different countries, and to work closely with them.
Our mandate was to establish a thriving defence industry in the State of Qatar and also create a research and development backbone along with acquisition of key defence programmes. Our most important mandate is to fulfil the requirements of the State of Qatar, only after that do we look at opportunities for export and partnerships with other countries. In the continuance of this strategy, we have established joint ventures and subsidiaries in Qatar and around the globe. We a footprint that is truly global in nature and we are working to fulfil our mandate and turn the vision for Barzan Holdings into reality.
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