A report issued by the global credit rating agency Standard & Poor's showed that regional growth began to recover in the third quarter of 2020, but the new variables from the Coronavirus frustrated the recovery path, and therefore the economies of the Middle East will not be able to return to the path of GDP growth rates, recorded before the pandemic, will be expected only by 2024.
The report indicated that Kuwait recorded the largest drop in growth among the countries of the region during 2020, with a growth deficit of nearly 12 percent. The agency reveals that oil wealth is a major difference between the Gulf countries and North Africa, as weak financial positions continue to weigh on North African countries, while the accumulation of high levels of government assets with Gulf governments supports their financial and external positions.
The agency disclosed that the large reserves of the Gulf states of oil and gas are among the main factors supporting most of the sovereign ratings of the Gulf states, as the high income from the oil and gas sector results in high levels of economic wealth, with general government surpluses consisting of double figures as a percentage of GDP before the structural adjustment in oil prices that began in the second half of 2014.
Source (Al-Rai Newspaper-Kuwait, Edited)
