President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte stressed Saturday that his country is committed to its contractual obligations with the State of Qatar and is committed to the Agreements and Memorandums of Understanding (MoU) it signed. 
Addressing the Philippines-Qatar Business Forum, Duterte said that making agreements with the Philippines now will be different than in the past were sometimes the agreements were violated. He added that he is committed to making his country corruption-free and will not allow any investor to suffer from corruption. 
He noted that his country has a number of promising investment opportunities in many factors such as agriculture, mining, and industry. He called on Qatari businessmen to take full advantage of those opportunities and establish companies that would add value to both countries. He added that Qatar and the GCC are important for the Philippines whether for importing labor or goods. 
For his part, Qatar Chamber Vice Chairman Mohamed bin Ahmed bin Twar urged businessmen in the Philippines to enhance cooperation with Qatar and establish firms in the country that can benefit from investment opportunities available in Qatar across all economic sectors. 
He noted that Qatar and Philippine were friendly countries with both sides looking to strengthen bilateral ties ever since establishing diplomatic relations in 1981. This was evident in the signing of a number of MOUs and agreements to cement their economic and trade ties to higher levels, he added. The Vice Chairman of Qatar Chamber also noted that relations between Qatar and Philippines are characterized by convergence of views on many international issues, and are going in the right direction towards highest stages at all levels in common interests, which serves as the peoples of the two countries. 
Despite that, Bin Twar added, trade volume remains below the level of cooperation at QR218 million. This ranks the Philippines in 26th place in terms of its size of trade partnership with Qatar. There were more than 200 companies from the Asian country operating in Qatar. The number of workers from the country is also around 200 thousand working across different fields. They are the fourth largest group of foreign workers living in Qatar. The latter meanwhile is the third-largest destination of Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW's) in the Middle East and also the fourth-largest destination of OFW's worldwide. 
He added that Qatar was committed to Asia as a vital and important party in promoting regional and global economy, as well as an important destination for investments.

Source: QNA