You are right that the Middle East has purchasing power, on a per capita basis. But the actual imported quanities of good, in dollar value, is quite low once you exclude all the luxury cars and watches.
You only need to visit Carrefour to see that this country doesn't import high-end, expensive consummables. The reason is that while there are some people here who could afford to buy these products, the actual volume of sales would make their import not cost-effective. And due to the cultural spread of residents, the 10% of people who buy expesive goods is divided into tiny blocks of consumers who want expensive Asian/European/American/African products.
The marketplace is too diverse to support a vast array of expensive product lines.
I think you will find that high end products have bulk sales in countries like China and India far in excess of here in Qatar, due to their populations (each country has a population of over 1,000,000,000 people). If even 0.1% are willing to pay for a rare french brand of cheese, that's still a lot of people, compared with 0.1% of the population of Qatar. Which is why you can't buy rare French cheese here (among a long list of other consummables).
You are right that the Middle East has purchasing power, on a per capita basis. But the actual imported quanities of good, in dollar value, is quite low once you exclude all the luxury cars and watches.
You only need to visit Carrefour to see that this country doesn't import high-end, expensive consummables. The reason is that while there are some people here who could afford to buy these products, the actual volume of sales would make their import not cost-effective. And due to the cultural spread of residents, the 10% of people who buy expesive goods is divided into tiny blocks of consumers who want expensive Asian/European/American/African products.
The marketplace is too diverse to support a vast array of expensive product lines.
I think you will find that high end products have bulk sales in countries like China and India far in excess of here in Qatar, due to their populations (each country has a population of over 1,000,000,000 people). If even 0.1% are willing to pay for a rare french brand of cheese, that's still a lot of people, compared with 0.1% of the population of Qatar. Which is why you can't buy rare French cheese here (among a long list of other consummables).