DOHA: Qatar's prime minister insisted on Thursday that the Gulf state had been right to buy London department store Harrods, and that the gas-driven economy is doing so well that there was no plan to introduce income tax.
Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani also said in his first interview since becoming head of government on March 17 that Qatar wanted its $450-billion sovereign wealth fund to become one of the world's five biggest.
The sheikh was questioned about the Qatar Investment Authority's foreign purchases in the rare televised encounter between a leader of the Gulf state and an audience from the public.
Qatar bought a 17-percent stake in German auto group Volkswagen in 2009 and paid a reported $1.7 billion for Harrods in 2010. Volkswagen is recovering from scandal while the landmark London store was badly hit by the coronavirus pandemic, reporting losses for 2020 and cutting hundreds of jobs.
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