Qatar signs $70m hotel deal in Comoros

State-owned Qatar National Hotels said on Wednesday it would invest $70 million in a luxury hotel resort in Comoros, one of the largest injections of foreign investment into the poor Indian Ocean archipelago. Owned by the Qatar government, the Qatar National Hotels deal is part of a $540m pledge to support development in one of the world's most impoverished countries.

In 2008, Dubai World agreed to a similar project to build a top-end hotel on the same site at the northern tip of Grande Comore, the largest of the archipelago's three island's. But the state-owned global holding company pulled out after the global financial crisis hurt its finances. Mohammad Abdullah Al Roumayh, Qatar's deputy minister for foreign affairs, said the hotel complex would comprise 150 bedrooms. The Comoros' heavily-indebted economy is expected to grow by 2 per cent this year from 1.8 per cent in 2009, according to the International Monetary Fund.