The Arab Investment & Export Credit Guarantee Corporation (Dhaman), called for the need to continue moving at the level of countries and at the regional level to diversify the commodity exports to Arab countries, in addition to reducing its geographical focus based on a limited number of exporting countries and markets.
The General Director of the Corporation, Abdullah Al Subaih, stated that "trade in goods in Arab countries represents about 5 percent of total world trade and 11 percent of total trade in developing countries for the year 2019."
According to Daman’s monitoring of Arab trade trends for the years 2019 and 2020, primary materials of all kinds still represent the largest share of the total merchandise exports of Arab countries, at a rate of more than 74 percent, and oil represented about 60 percent of total exports. Dhaman’s report showed a great variation in the index of diversification of exports among the countries of the region, as the degree of diversity increases in the Arab Mashreq countries and some Arab Maghreb countries, against a decline in the rest of the countries, especially the oil-exporting countries.
Manufactured goods, as usual, accounted for the most important share of the Arab countries’ merchandise imports from abroad, at 66 percent. Whereas the concentration continued at the level of major countries in the field of commodity trade, with 10 Arab countries contributing 94 percent of the region's total exports, in exchange for the acquisition of 10 Arab countries on 87 percent of all Arab imports.
Source (Al Bayan Newspaper-UAE, Edited)
