The International Monetary Fund has revealed a significant impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the growth prospects of the poorest economies in the Middle East and North Africa, while oil-exporting countries benefit from higher crude prices.
In a report on the performance of the Middle East and North Africa region, the Fund expected that the economic growth of the oil-producing Gulf Cooperation Council countries would accelerate to 6.4 percent in 2022, after its previous forecasts indicated a growth of only 2.7 percent, which represents an increase of 2.2 percentage points.
The IMF expected that the gross domestic product of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is the largest economy in the region and one of the largest oil exporters in the world, will grow by 7.6 percent in 2022. The International Monetary Fund raised its expectations for growth rates in general for the Middle East and North Africa region to 5 percent in 2022, after it had expected a growth of 4.1 percent last October. However, this improvement masks significant disparities between countries in the region. The recovery is expected to be uneven and affected by the extent of the diversification of economies.
Jihad Azour, director of the IMF's Middle East and Central Asia Department, said that "before the war in Ukraine, the region's economy was showing signs of a strong recovery, and the only negative side was inflation, which began to rise in 2021 and remained high."
Source (Al-Sharq Al-Awsat Newspaper, Edited)
