Asia Oceania + Qatar

Overview of the region

COVID-19 is still a significant problem in the region for 2022. China saw a new peak in cases at the start of April leading to a decision to shut down Shanghai in pursuit of their Zero-COVID strategy. This is a significant setback as Shanghai is a major financial hub and port with global importance to trade.

In most of Asia, higher commodity and energy prices are inflating producer prices. Singapore, India, and South Korea are seeing higher-than-normal inflation and higher fuel costs may add to this over the course of 2022.

In China, inflation remains low, but producer prices increased by 8.8 percent in the year to February 2022, and this is likely to be passed along in the supply chain to global export prices. It is a similar story in Japan, where higher commodity prices for steel, chemicals, plastics and resins, copper and shortages of semiconductors are driving up costs of production.

Our index for Asia includes Qatar as a sub-region, and Doha has moved from warm to hot as the momentum of projects increases with Qatar building toward its National Vision 2030, with megaprojects such as Lusail City, Qatar Rail, Free Zones and infrastructure projects relevant to the Qatar 2030 Vision for the country. Clean energy is also a promising area of investment with an 800 MW solar generation facility being completed on a 10km2 site at Al Kharsaah, west of Doha comprising 2 million bifocal solar panels.

In May 2022, the inflation rate in Qatar had fallen to 4.7 percent year-on-year while construction activity in Qatar went through a significant rebound, driving costs up due to the volume of work and supply chain issues.

What our index tells us about the region

The following shows the top 10 most expensive locations in the region. The majority of these are in major cities, or from highly developed economies like Australia, which translates into higher construction and labour costs.

Consistent to the findings internationally, industrial locations make up half of the most expensive locations due to the controlled working environment and priorities around hydrocarbon-critical operations.

The complete ranking at-a-glance of all locations within the Asia Oceania + Qatar portfolio is provided in the bubble diagram below, and both archetypes have been combined for this snapshot.

Moving to the IT & AV costs, the map below shows the average cost by country, and enhances the overall findings that locations further from the hubs translate into higher overall IT & AV costs. Resourcing costs in Asia from REOCIT hubs remain quite attractive, however, vendor rates in Australia are comparatively high within the Asia Oceania + Qatar region due to local labour wages.