Doha, August 20 (QNA) - Qatar Central Bank (QCB) has released its Annual Report for the year 2025, providing a comprehensive overview of the State of Qatar's monetary, financial, and institutional developments. 
The report also highlights the key achievements and QCB-led initiatives that strengthened the resilience and inclusiveness of the financial sector and further reinforced QCB's supervisory and regulatory capacity.
Key highlights from the report include maintaining confidence in the peg. In 2025, Qatar Central Bank reduced interest rates in line with the requirements of the monetary policy and the Qatari economy, thereby maintaining monetary stability. QCB lowered its key policy rates by a cumulative 75 base points, with the reductions transmitted fully and immediately to the average overnight interbank market rate, reflecting effective monetary policy transmission.
The report also noted that the Central Bank safeguarded financial stability. QCB's proactive oversight, forward-looking risk assessment, and expanded stress testing helped cover a broader range of risks, deepening the surveillance of geopolitical developments. As a result, the banking sector remained resilient, with capital and liquidity buffers well above regulatory thresholds.
It pointed to optimized reserve management as well, noting that official reserves rose to QAR 202.2 billion at end-2025, further strengthening the country's external buffers. Gold represented a larger share of the portfolio, up from 7.9 percent at end-2021 to 28.9 percent at end-2025, and reserve coverage of currency issued reached 995.4 percent.
On strengthening the regulatory and supervisory framework, QCB issued a series of circulars and extended supervisory coverage through 15 onsite summary reviews across all eight Qatari national banks under its new risk-based methodology, alongside 84 special inspection missions.
On the Third Financial Sector Strategy (3FSS), the report noted that of the 283 projects under the 3FSS, 153 are QCB-led. Across the strategy as a whole, 111 projects were successfully completed and achieved during the Strategy's third consecutive year of execution.
The report also noted that the QCB-operated Real-Time Gross Settlement System (QA-RTGS) settled nearly 497,000 high-value transactions worth QAR 10.26 trillion. It was also further enhanced by a foreign currency transfer service, enabling banks to settle and transfer US dollar transactions locally through accounts with QCB.
It highlighted the advancing FinTech development undertaken by QCB, saying that QCB-licensed FinTech entities rose to 14 and 10 key regulations were published under the FinTech Strategy. Sandbox programs attracted more than 90 applications, with six firms admitted across the regulatory and express streams.
As part of its goal to deepen capital markets, QCB launched the second phase of the Primary Dealers Framework and held its first auction on 24 August 2025. Government bond and sukuk issuance reached QAR 23.3 billion over the year, with outstanding instruments of QAR 121.4 billion at end-2025.
The report also mentioned that QCB delivered 104 specialised training programmes to its employees and the broader financial sector, recording 4,664 participants, and institutionalised the QCB-led learning platform alongside formal recruitment criteria. (QNA)