Gulf Arab growth to slow by half in 2009, says IMF

DUBAI (Reuters) – Economic growth of Gulf Arab oil exporters is set to slow by almost half to 3.5 percent this year as the Middle East earns about $300 billion less from crude oil exports, the International Monetary Fund said on Sunday.

Saudi Arabia and five of its neighbours in the world’s biggest oil-exporting region are likely to post fiscal deficits amounting to 3.1 percent of gross domestic product, compared with surpluses of 22.8 percent of GDP in 2008, the IMF said.


Real GDP growth in 2009 for the Gulf — including the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and Bahrain — would fall from 6.8 percent last year, Masood Ahmed, director of the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia Department, said.

“There has been an extraordinary collapse of confidence. Everybody is holding back in making decisions about spending,” Ahmed told an economic conference of the IMF’s worst global economic outlook since the organisation was created in 1944.

Reuters