Company registration in Qatar

The expensive decision in Qatar is made before any document is drafted: which register the company enters. The State's commercial register and the Qatar Financial Centre are two rulebooks, and moving between them later means starting again. Which of the two fits, we settle before filing.

The rest of our Qatari work sits on the Qatar page, and the country list for this service on the service page.

The particulars the founding document must name

• The type of company, its name, its purpose and its head office.
• Partners by name, nationality, residence and address.
• The capital, each partner's share, and any contribution in kind with its value and its provider.
• The managers by name and nationality, whether partners or outsiders.
• The supervisory board members, if the company has one.
• The company's term, how profits and losses are split, the conditions for assigning shares, and the form notices to partners take.

The capital, and what the bank does with it

Two registers, two rulebooks

Under the Ministry of Commerce and Industry

The company lives by the Commercial Companies Law and the investment law together: the register entry gives it capacity, and an ownership share above 49% is approved separately.

Under the Qatar Financial Centre

The Centre's own law guarantees its licensed entities full ownership by anyone resident or not, free repatriation of profits, hiring on their own terms, and no taxes beyond those its Regulations set.

Fifteen days, twice, and they behave differently

• The manager files for the register entry, and the application is decided within fifteen days of arriving complete.
• An ownership share above 49% is applied for separately, with the prescribed fees paid.
• That second application is also decided in fifteen days, but there silence is refusal.
• A refusal can be taken to the Minister within fifteen days, he answers within thirty, and his answer is final.

What the first year counts from

• Liability for an overvalued contribution in kind runs out three years after the register entry.
• If losses reach half the capital, the managers must within thirty days put covering it or dissolving to the partners.
• A company owned by one person ends on the owner's death unless the heirs unite the shares or change the form within six months.
• Machinery and equipment imported to set the project up are exempt from customs duty.

Sources: partners, capital, the bank and the fifteen-day decision — articles 228–235 of the Commercial Companies Law as amended in 2021; ownership, the closed areas and the grievance — articles 2–5 and 11 of Law No. 1 of 2019; the Centre's guarantees — article 12 of the Qatar Financial Centre Law.