Qatar’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry said 11 new factories began production between April and June in a second-quarter performance review published on September 1. The ministry reported that 28 factories had started production from the beginning of 2026 through the end of the second quarter, with combined investment of QAR253 million. The announcement brings together indicators discussed at the minister’s quarterly meeting across several sectors. These figures describe factories that began production during the stated windows and the investment total reported for that group; they are not a count of all industrial facilities or all investment in Qatar’s industrial sector.

The ministry separately put cumulative investment in the industrial sector at QAR248.44 billion. That is a cumulative stock figure, not new spending made during the second quarter. The QAR253 million figure and QAR248.44 billion total therefore have different scopes: the former is the combined investment attributed to 28 factories that began production since the start of the year, while the latter is the cumulative industrial-sector investment. The ministry linked the new starts to expansion of the industrial base, but it did not report the factories’ output volumes or production capacity. The release does not break down either investment figure by subsector.

The same quarterly review included export indicators. The ministry said the share of factories that export rose from 23 percent in the first quarter to 25 percent in the second, a difference of 2 percentage points. Private-sector exports increased from QAR0.8 billion in the first quarter to QAR0.9 billion in the second, which the ministry reported as growth of 12.5 percent. Because the two monetary totals are rounded in the source, the stated 12.5 percent is retained as published rather than recalculated from the rounded figures. The release does not provide a breakdown by exported product or destination market.

Together, the measures describe separate parts of the industrial picture: factories starting operations, investment attributed to those factories, the accumulated sector investment stock and the share of factories participating in exports. A single quarterly review cannot establish which subsectors drove the change, how many jobs the new plants created or how much local input they use. The ministry’s wider release also covers service processing times, digital services and other departmental activities; those are not the same measure as factory investment or output. This report focuses on the indicators the ministry directly tied to industrial production and exports.

The ministry also said the processing time for an initial approval had been reduced to one working day. That is an administrative service measure for an approval step; it does not mean factory construction or the time to begin production takes one day. Future reporting on output, employment, exports and capacity for the factories that started operations would help assess their economic contribution. The current release reports 28 production starts and QAR253 million in combined investment for those facilities, but it does not state realized production value or a forward investment target.