Qatar’s sizable financial buffers and its population of just 2.2 million mean it is well positioned financially to ride out an extended period of low oil prices compared with most of its Opec peers.

In its September economic insight report, the Doha-based commercial lender Qatar National Bank (QNB) said it expected Qatar’s real GDP growth to accelerate from 4.0 per cent in 2014 to 4.7 per cent in 2015.

It says the acceleration will be driven by the country’s extensive capital infrastructure project spending programme ahead of hosting the 2022 Fifa World Cup.

The oil price slump means that Qatar is on course to record its first budget deficit in 15 years in 2015. The IMF estimates that Qatar’s net financial worth, including Qatar Investment Authority’s assets, is 100 per cent of GDP. Nominal GDP stood at $210bn in 2014.

US-based ratings agency Moody’s Investors Service is forecasting that Qatar’s government may decrease capital spending on some projects to ease fiscal pressures amid lower hydrocarbon revenues. But it says Qatar still has the financial power to continue spending on strategic capital projects ahead of hosting the World Cup.

“The prudent management of its hydrocarbon windfall has enabled the government to maintain one of the lowest fiscal breakeven oil prices in the GCC, while accumulating significant external assets through the Qatar Investment Authority,” it said in a report published in July. “Qatar remains in a very comfortable position to finance its first fiscal deficit since 1999.”

QNB predicts the Qatari government will see fiscal deficits in 2015 and 2016 due to high capital spending and continued low oil prices.

The lender also forecasts the government will swing into a budget surplus in 2017, due to rising oil prices.