What the National Funding Gate asks you to produce

In November 2025, Qatar Development Bank launched the National Funding Gate, branded TAMKEEN, as a single digital channel for business financing applications. It was developed under the guidance of Qatar Central Bank and in coordination with partner national banks. At the same launch, the Al Dhameen guarantee scheme was replaced by the Credit Guarantee Program and folded into the same channel, with an initial allocation of QAR 3 billion.

Most of what has been written about it describes the portal. The portal is the least interesting part. What matters to anyone preparing an application is the document set sitting behind it, because that set is organised on a principle most applicants do not expect.

This article covers what the published checklist asks for and what the structure of it implies. It does not cover eligibility for QDB Direct Financing, which is a separate question with its own published answer, or the construction of the model itself.

What changed in November 2025

Three things changed at once, and they are worth separating because they are often described as a single announcement.

A single application channel replaced separate approaches to individual institutions. Registration runs through the NAS (Tawtheeq) identity platform and links to the company's commercial registration. Applicants select the partner institutions they want to reach.

The Al Dhameen guarantee scheme was renamed and restructured as the Credit Guarantee Program. It works the same way in principle: QDB does not lend, it guarantees part of what a partner institution lends, so that the institution will extend financing it would otherwise decline or price higher.

And eligibility for that guarantee route is broad. All Qatar-based private sector companies with a valid commercial licence may apply, from micro to large, at any stage of growth. That is a materially wider gate than QDB Direct Financing, which carries a Qatari ownership requirement and excludes several sectors outright.

The checklist is keyed to purpose, not to size

QDB publishes a downloadable document checklist for the National Funding Gate, generated 2 November 2025. Read it once and the organising principle is obvious: it is arranged by what the money is for.

There are around two dozen purpose categories. Machinery, equipment or furniture. Raw materials. Land acquisition. Construction. Pre-operating expenses. Project-related working capital. Invoice or bill financing. Advance payment guarantees. Bid bonds. Performance guarantees. Vehicles. Technology and digital infrastructure. Renovation and expansion. Each carries its own short list of documents.

Financing machinery asks for a proforma invoice from an approved supplier, machinery specifications, a quotation comparison and an asset valuation. Financing land acquisition asks for a title deed, a sale agreement, a valuation report from a certified valuer and a municipality zoning check. Financing construction asks for a project timeline, the contract and bill of quantities, the building permit, and cash flow projections.

Nothing in that structure keys off company size, turnover band or years of trading. Two companies of very different scale borrowing for the same purpose face the same list. One company borrowing for three purposes faces three lists.

This is worth pausing on because it is a common and expensive sequencing error. A company that decides it needs QAR 4 million and then allocates that figure across categories after the fact will produce quotations, valuations and schedules that do not reconcile to the split it eventually submits. The reviewer sees the gap immediately, because the reviewer is reading the documents against the categories.

Where the feasibility study sits

The checklist places a feasibility study in the general section, alongside the commercial registration, trade licences and QID copies. It appears again, explicitly, under pre-operating expenses, where the requirement is stated as a business plan or a feasibility study.

QDB's own guidance is that requirements vary by business type and funding need, so the general section should not be read as a universal mandate. What it does indicate is that the study is treated as a base document rather than a specialist attachment for one financing type.

The Credit Guarantee Program makes the logic explicit. Among its required criteria is a financial projections test: the company must be able to justify a commercially viable project on the basis of either existing audited financial performance or a feasibility study.

That framing also tells you what the study has to do. If it is standing in for audited performance, it has to carry the same weight as audited performance would. A document that asserts a market opportunity without quantifying it is not doing the job the criterion describes.

The change that matters more than the portal

The single application channel is presented as a convenience, and it is one. But it conceals a distinction that determines how your document should be written.

Under the Credit Guarantee Program, applications are reviewed and approved by the partner financial institution first, according to that institution's own credit policies. Only once the institution has approved does it submit a guarantee request to QDB for eligibility assessment. QDB then issues a guarantee covering an agreed portion of the financing.

The bank reads first. QDB reads second, and reads a narrower question.

That is the opposite of the QDB Direct Financing route, where QDB is the lender and assesses the project against its own development mandate — demand and supply gaps, import substitution, export potential.

The consequence is that these two routes want different documents. A commercial bank credit committee is asking whether the facility will be serviced and what happens if it is not. It wants debt service coverage, sensitivity to the obvious downside, and a security position it can live with. A development bank assessing against a national mandate is asking what the project contributes.

The same study will not answer both well. Submitting one written for the development mandate into a commercial credit process produces a document that reads as an argument about national benefit to a reader who wanted a repayment analysis.

Projections are set by the tenor

The checklist ends with a category of its own, separate from the purpose lists. It contains a single line: projections, based on tenor.

That phrasing is brief and it is easy to skim past. Taken at face value it says the projection horizon is set by the facility you are asking for, not by convention.

This is where a professional interpretation is worth separating from the published wording. The wording establishes only that tenor determines the projection period. In practice the implication is that a generic five-year projection — the default output of most templates, and the format most applicants submit regardless of circumstance — will be wrong in one direction or the other for most applications.

The Credit Guarantee Program allows tenors of up to 15 years, including a grace period of up to three years, depending on the project and the agreement with the institution. An applicant seeking a 12-year facility who submits five years of projections has left the reviewer without the seven years in which the majority of the repayment occurs. An applicant seeking an 18-month working capital line who submits five annual columns has buried the only period anyone cares about inside the first column, at a resolution that hides the seasonal trough the facility exists to cover.

Where a grace period applies, the projections should show it as it will actually operate. The period in which the facility is drawn and servicing has not yet begun is precisely where a thin model fails, and it fails visibly.

Four things that surprise applicants

The guarantee does not replace security. QDB states that collateral requirements are set by the partner institution under its own credit policy, and that the QDB guarantee acts as supplementary collateral rather than a replacement for normal security requirements. Applicants frequently read a partial guarantee as a substitute for the collateral they do not have. It is not. It improves the terms available on a facility the bank was already prepared to consider.

Coverage is partial and calculated. Guarantee coverage is typically up to 50 per cent of the financed amount, and up to 70 per cent for low-ticket financing. The percentage is determined by sector classification, probability of default, financing size and equity contribution among other factors. Where coverage exceeds 50 per cent, pricing is capped at one per cent above the rate defined by the QMR, though institutions may price lower.

Two company types are excluded. All Qatar-based private sector companies with a valid commercial licence may apply, from micro to large. Joint stock companies and public holding companies are not eligible for the Credit Guarantee Program.

Registration currently has a boundary. QDB's published guidance states that registration on the platform is available to companies registered with the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, with support for additional company types indicated as coming. Companies registered under other regimes should confirm their position before building a timetable around the channel.

There is also a discrepancy in QDB's own published material worth knowing about, on the number of years of financial statements required.

Both are current QDB publications and neither is annotated as superseding the other. Prepare three years where the company has them and you have satisfied either reading.

Before you apply

• Decide precisely what you are financing, and in what proportions, before assembling anything
• Map each portion to its purpose category and pull that category's document list
• Establish which route you are on — direct lending or a guaranteed facility through a partner bank — because the first reader differs
• Confirm your company type is eligible if the guarantee route is the one you need
• Set the projection period to the facility tenor you are requesting, not to a default
• Set the projection interval to the facility type: monthly across the cycle for working capital, annual across the term for capital facilities
• Model the grace period explicitly if one applies
• Prepare three years of financial statements where the company has them
• Treat the guarantee as an improvement to terms, not as a replacement for security