DOHA/DUBAI/ABU DHABI: Shortages of US dollars hit money exchange houses in Qatar on Sunday, making it harder for worried foreign workers to send money home, as foreign banks scaled back business with Qatari institutions because of the region’s diplomatic crisis.
“We have no dollars because there is no shipment or transportation from the UAE. There is no stock,” said a dealer at the Qatar-UAE Exchange House in Doha’s City Center mall. “The shipment is blocked from the UAE.”
Several other exchange houses in Doha also told Reuters they had no supplies of dollars.
At Qatar-UAE Exchange, dozens of people — some of the foreigners who comprise nearly 90 percent of the population of 2.6 million — waited quietly in line to change money or make remittances to their home countries.
“I am not panicked but my family are scared,” said John Vincent, an air-conditioning repairman from the Philippines.
“I sent 2,000 riyals ($550) home but I have some more savings left here in Qatar. I will see what the situation is in coming days before I decide what to do.”
The dollar shortages do not mean Qatar is running out of money. But they show how the diplomatic crisis is disrupting parts of the financial system.
Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahraini and Egyptian banks began scaling back business with Qatar last week after their governments cut diplomatic and transport ties, accusing Doha of supporting terrorism.
Then at the weekend, the UAE told its banks to exercise “enhanced due diligence” toward six Qatari banks which, it alleged, might have done business with people or entities on a terrorism blacklist.
UAE banks were absent from Qatar’s foreign exchange and money markets on Sunday, causing both those markets to slow down, because they feared any deals could expose them to legal risk, bankers said.
Some Western banks with a presence in Qatar continued business as normal, partly because they did not want to lose out on billions of dollars of building projects.
But other Western banks have halted new Qatar business including interbank and syndicated lending, while continuing to service existing business, banking sources said.
“Everybody is shocked — they are not worried about Qatar’s credit, they are worried about compliance and the risk that the local sanctions could be escalated to an international level,” said one foreign banker in the region.
Dollars
Exchange house dealers in Qatar said the dollar shortage was partly a seasonal phenomenon, because the Gulf’s hot summer and Ramadan had begun, periods when there was traditionally high demand for travel abroad.
Sudhir Kumar Shetty, president of UAE Exchange, which has eight branches in Qatar, said his firm was continuing to handle remittances and currency buying as usual in that country.
He said the firm had not seen any major change in remittance volumes due to the diplomatic tension.
But he added that dollar supply was not meeting demand in Qatar and attributed this partly to flows of the US currency from other Gulf countries being disrupted.
“Everywhere, all the banks and exchange houses, there are no dollars. All the exchange houses are trying to get currencies from other countries,” the dealer at Qatar-UAE Exchange said, adding that his firm was hoping for a shipment from Hong Kong.
The six Qatari banks named by the UAE — Qatar National Bank (QNB), Qatar Islamic Bank, Qatar International Islamic Bank, Masraf Al-Rayan, Doha Bank and unlisted Barwa Bank — did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.
The share prices of all five of the listed banks fell on Sunday, with QNB losing 0.5 percent, as investors reacted to the prospect of the banks facing funding difficulties because of reduced ability to borrow from foreign institutions.
Qatari banks have around 60 billion riyals ($16.5 billion) in funding in the form of customer and interbank deposits from other Gulf states, SICO Bahrain estimated. Most of this could eventually be withdrawn if the crisis continues.
Bankers expect Qatari banks to borrow from the central bank’s repo facility if they become short of funds.
The repo rate is currently at 2.25 percent and the cost of borrowing three-month money among Qatari banks rose near that level on Sunday, to 2.20 percent, the highest in many years.
Central Bank rules limit the size of the repos to 2 percent of each bank’s private sector deposits.
Bankers speculate the Central Bank may lift this cap; the central bank did not respond to requests for comment.
Dollar shortages hit Qatar exchange houses
Dollar shortages hit Qatar exchange houses
Israel military says three projectiles fired from north Gaza
JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said it identified three projectiles fired from the northern Gaza Strip that crossed into Israel on Monday, the latest in a series of launches from the war-ravaged Palestinian territory.
“One projectile was intercepted by the IAF (air force), one fell in Sderot and another projectile fell in an open area. No injuries were reported,” the military said in a statement.
Sudan army air strike kills 10 in southern Khartoum: rescuers
- Strike targeted a market area of the capital’s Southern Belt ‘for the third time in less than a month’
- War between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary forces has killed tens of thousands of people
PORT SUDAN, Sudan: Ten Sudanese civilians were killed and over 30 wounded in an army air strike on southern Khartoum, volunteer rescue workers said.
The strike on Sunday targeted a market area of the capital’s Southern Belt “for the third time in less than a month,” said the local Emergency Response Room (ERR), part of a network of volunteers across the country coordinating frontline aid.
The group said those killed burned to death. The wounded, suffering from burns, were taken to the local Bashair Hospital, with five of them in a critical condition.
Since April 2023, the war between Sudan’s regular army and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) has killed tens of thousands of people.
In the capital alone, the violence killed 26,000 people between April 2023 and June 2024, according to a report by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Khartoum has experienced some of the war’s worst violence, with entire neighborhoods emptied out and taken over by fighters.
The military, which maintains a monopoly on the skies with its jets, has not managed to wrest back control of the capital from the paramilitary.
Of the 11.5 million people currently displaced within Sudan, nearly a third have fled from the capital, according to United Nations figures.
Both the RSF and the army have been repeatedly accused of targeting civilians and indiscriminately shelling residential areas.
Israel says Hamas has not given ‘status of hostages’ it says ready to free
- A Hamas official gave a list of 34 hostages the group was ready to free
JERUSALEM: Israel said on Monday that Hamas had so far not provided the status of the 34 hostages the group declared it was ready to release in the first phase of a potential exchange deal.
“As yet, Israel has not received any confirmation or comment by Hamas regarding the status of the hostages appearing on the list,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said in a statement after a Hamas official gave a list of 34 hostages the group was ready to free in the first phase.
Shooting attack on a bus carrying Israelis in the occupied West Bank kills 3
- The attack occurred in the Palestinian village of Al-Funduq, on one of the main east-west roads crossing the territory
JERUSALEM: A shooting attack on a bus carrying Israelis in the occupied West Bank killed at least three people and wounded seven others on Monday, Israeli medics said.
Israel’s Magen David Adom rescue service said those killed included two women in their 60s and a man in his 40s.
Violence has surged in the West Bank since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack out of Gaza ignited the ongoing war there.
The attack occurred in the Palestinian village of Al-Funduq, on one of the main east-west roads crossing the territory. The identities of the attackers and those killed were not immediately known. The military said it was looking for the attackers, who fled.
Palestinians have carried out scores of shooting, stabbing and car-ramming attacks against Israelis in recent years. Israel has launched near-nightly military raids across the territory that frequently trigger gunbattle with militants.
The Palestinian Health Ministry says at least 835 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the West Bank since the start of the war in Gaza.
Israel captured the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem in the 1967 Mideast war, and the Palestinians want all three territories for their future state.
Some 3 million Palestinians live in the West Bank under seemingly open-ended Israeli military rule, with the internationally recognized Palestinian Authority administering population centers. Over 500,000 Israeli settlers live in scores of settlements, which most of the international community considers illegal.
Meanwhile, the war in Gaza is raging with no end in sight, though there has reportedly been recent progress in long-running talks aimed at a ceasefire and hostage release.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed across the border in a massive surprise attack nearly 15 months ago, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250. Some 100 hostages are still inside Gaza, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.
Israel’s air and ground offensive has killed over 45,800 Palestinians in Gaza, according to local health authorities, who say women and children make up more than half of those killed. They do not say how many of the dead were militants. The Israeli military says it has killed over 17,000 fighters, without providing evidence.
The war has destroyed vast areas of Gaza and displaced 90 percent of the territory’s population of 2.3 million, often multiple times. Hundreds of thousands are enduring a cold, rainy winter in tent camps along the windy coast. At least seven infants have died of hypothermia because of the harsh conditions, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.
Aid groups say Israeli restrictions, ongoing fighting and the breakdown of law and order in many areas make it difficult to provide desperately needed food and other assistance.
