Industrialization as a Strategic Choice

The success or failure of industrialization strategy in the twenty–first century in any country in the world depends on the correct answers to the following questions:
What do we produce?

How do we produce?

For whom do we produce?

The first question is linked to the selection of the good suitable for production.
The second question is related to the technical method followed to produce such a good at the lowest possible cost and having the best possible quality.
The third question is linked to the local consumption of the good or foreign export or both.

The method or style of reply to all such questions would determine the success or failure of any industrialization strategy anywhere.

The world has moved from cheap heavy industries to expensive light industries. The world has also turned to the industries of the future, namely computer services, tourism, communications, transportation, etc.
Industrialized countries have become countries that invent and discover. They spend generously on research, studies and practical experiments, while industrializing countries are those advanced countries that carry industrial ideas from “super” countries to their own “kitchens”. Finally, there are consumer countries forming the majority of countries in the world .

The State of Qatar has decided to adopt global industrialization as a strategic choice by taking its global industries to world markets through a group of pioneering national and foreign giant corporations in the field of gas and gas-derivative industries in order to make Qatar a world – class center of petrochemical and petrochemical derivative industries. Then the revenue accrued from such projects is used to transform such temporary wealth into permanent wealth for prosperity through distribution and diversification of sources of income in the State of Qatar as well as investment in Qatari nationals through preparation of technically – qualified youths to turn the country into a world – class center for world – class research and studies that, together with other centers, take part in making new discoveries for the prosperity of all mankind.

There will be advanced industries and services in Qatar based on science and scientists. The National Qatar Industries Company (NQI) will do its best to achieve this with Almighty God’s support.
Change of the strategic concept of industrialization started with the rapid development of technology as well as increasing scientific discoveries in all fields of human life between the inception of the age of the machine in the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century, when the theory of relative advantages in international trade advocated that each country become specialized in the field in which it can produce a certain product at a cost lower than that in other countries, enabling it to exchange what it produces with what other countries have.

Consequently, all countries benefit from such specialization. This theory continued to be applied up to the early seventies of the twentieth century. In 1971 what is known as the third scientific or electronic and microelectronic revolution started, mainly in the field of communications and sophisticated computers which have totally transformed the comprehensive strategic concept of industrialization in the whole world.
The world became divided into two groups: countries that discover, think and export, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, countries that apply, i.e. adopt what is discovered in advanced countries that are capable of spending on scientific research and development and a second group of countries that carry such ideas and plant them in climates suitable for the industrial application and production of such discoveries on a commercial level . Great Powers (U.S.A, Germany and Japan) have become specialized and exporters of advanced scientific research that focus on the production of selected sophisticated technologies. Developed countries in Western Europe, as well East and North Asia, have become fertile fields for the import of technology from the above Great Powers and applying it on a wide international range, either through partnership or licensing, in return for the right to use patents . Poor and other Third World countries have become dumping sites for wastes or “kitchens” polluted by heavy industries in need of cheap polluting energy such as iron and steal industries, as well as those countries producing building materials and all types of heavy and cheap goods (compare, for instance, the price of one ton of iron with the price of a camera weighing not more than one kilogramme) .

The world of today entered the twenty – first century and with this emerged a new concept of industrial development, namely the global stage. By this is meant the participation by more than one country in the production of the components of a product. Each of a set of countries manufactures a small component of a product assembled in one of the participating countries. Thus, the theory of relative advantages in world trade has little importance under the new concept of “global industrialization”, which stresses the attainment of the highest possible value – added of the product or service at any time and anywhere, through utilization of the relative advantages of the production of the same product or service in more than one country.
One after another, industrialized countries abandoned the concept of “national advantages” and adopted the concept of “global advantages” wherever they existed. A major global advantage of industrialization has been the emergence of economic blocks that complement each other, as well as the emergence of giant multinational corporations that have the same designation. Such multinationals started to apply the concept of reaching the consumer in the field of mobile service and goods for fixed services and goods. Such corporations bring the consumer to the place of the product such as tourism. They are similar to a mobile kitchen that moves to the client and cooks for him at his home “country” instead of inviting the client to “travel” to the country of the corporation that produces such a product.

Multinationals have resorted to the domination of world markets through opening branches all over the world by following the policy of licensing or partnership with local producers in host countries.
Soft drinks companies such as Pepsi Cola and Coca Cola as well as fast food restaurants , automobile manufacturers which produce their cars in more than one country, and those that produce domestic appliances and electronic machines , etc are some examples . A major feature of the development of industrial strategy in the twenty-first century is the transition of industrialized countries: great, developed or developing, from the concept of partial and provisional specialization in the production of certain components of a product and spreading the centres of their production and assembling over several countries forming a common economic block or market. Those who cannot adapt or join such giant international blocks will find themselves outside modern civilization, and isolated countries become dumping sites for the wastes of industrial countries affiliated to one system where history starts to end with backward countries. In the late twentieth century the so-called new international order emerged. It was formulated and divided to cover three giant international blocks: North America (U.S.A, Canada and Mexico), the European block (including Russia and East European countries also), and the Asian block (China, Japan and the Seven Asian Tigers, namely Singapore Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, South Korea and North Korea, Australia) . Thus the world has divided into three major axes in terms of economy: one in the East headed by Japan, the second in the West headed by the U.S.A, and the third in the middle headed by Western Europe. The remaining countries of the world have to join one of these three blocks for geographical, economic or political reasons, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.

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