There is no expectation that oil prices will rise much next year. It will stay in the $40-50 a barrel range. This will put additional pressure on the oil exporters in the Middle East, the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This was a report on Monday in its update on the Regional Economic Outlook for the Middle East and Central Asia.
Gross domestic product in the region is will drop by 4.1 percent this year. There is a downward revision of 1.3 percentage points in comparison with IMF’s forecast in April 2020. There is a expectation that the economies of the oil exporters in the Middle East and North Africa to suffer more and shrink by 6.6 percent this year, according to the IMF.
The six countries in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—will see their economies slump by 6.0 percent in 2020, before rising by 2.3 percent in 2021.
In Q2, the economy of Saudi Arabia shrank by 7 percent. This is with the unemployment rate hitting a record high as the combined effect of the oil price crash. The coronavirus pandemic hit the world’s largest oil exporter hard.
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Source: Oil Price
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