Saudi Arabia Pledges To Invest Oil Export Windfall In Economic Reforms

...P in the first quarter of the year growing at the fastest pace since 2011. Unsurprisingly, the surge has been driven by resurgent oil markets, as the fallout from Russia’s 24 February invasion of Ukraine has pushed oil prices above $100/B for the first time since 2014. The kingdom launched its Vi...

Saudi Government Posts First Surplus Since 2014 In Q1

Algeria Slashes Oil & Gas Investment

...8% to $8.1bn last year. Algeria faces mounting economic challenges: its foreign reserves halved between end-2013 ($195bn) and end-2017 ($97bn), whilst the country notched up an $11bn trade deficit for 2017 taking the total to a cumulative $45bn for the three years since oil prices tanked in late 2014...

Algeria Charts New Economic Direction. Is It Battling Against The Tide?

...blic debt increased,” said the IMF following the conclusion of its Article IV mission to Algeria on 20 March. Algeria’s trade deficit was a record $17.84bn in 2016 up from $17.01bn in 2015 and a surplus of $2.4bn in 2014. Of course the key variable here is the oil price (see chart, and table p5 for fu...

Iranian Officials Highlight Scourge Of Corruption

...2014 to 12.3% in 2015 and 13.2% in 2016, according to the IMF’s April 2015 World Economic Outlook. The speaker of the Iranian parliament Ali Larijani said this week that 42% of Iranian university graduates are unemployed. ...

Jordan Taps IMF Funds

...versification efforts, will ease pressure on Jordan’s public finances and help contain the current account deficit. Also lower oil prices will help to boost Jordan’s growth prospects. But the switch to imported oil from cheaper Egyptian gas (disrupted since 2012, and reduced to a trickle of only 30mn cfd in 2014...

IMF: Boost For ‘Transition Economies’

...the fund’s ‘Toward New Horizons Arab Economic Transformation Amid Political Transitions,’ warned “2014 is likely to be another year of tepid economic activity” for the region’s oil importers with average economic growth “slightly short of 3%.” Such growth is “inadequate to deal with the fu...

IMF: Diversification Key For Sudan With Oil Revenues Imminent

...thorities have taken some useful measures thus far, but they have to do more,” Mr Jenkins said. “We are quite encouraged by the oil revenue agreement. It will bring, we believe, just under $500mn to Sudan this year, and around $1.5bn in 2014,” he said on the basis that the IMF sees South Sudan ramping up it...