RIYADH: The World Bank has increased its 2025 forecast for Saudi Arabia’s economic growth from 4.2 percent in January to 5.9 percent.
However, in its most recent study, the bank reduced its initial projection of 4.1 percent for the Kingdom’s gross domestic product growth in 2024 to 2.5 percent. Concurrently, the 2025 estimate has been changed to 4.7 percent from 3.8 percent, while the aggregate GDP growth forecast for the Gulf Cooperation Council countries in 2024 has been lowered from 3.6 percent to 2.8 percent.
The report also revised the GDP growth estimate for the United Arab Emirates, which was earlier predicted to grow by 3.7 percent to 3.9 percent in 2024 and then by 4.1 percent in 2025 Kuwait’s GDP is expected to grow by 2.8 percent in 2024 and 3.1 percent in 2025.
Similarly, growth in Bahrain’s economy is predicted to expand from January’s estimates to 3.5 percent in 2024 and 3.3 percent in 2025. Qatar’s economy, meanwhile, increased from 3.1 percent to 3.2 percent in 2025 but decreased from 2.5 percent to 2.1 percent in 2024.
This shift is in line with larger economic trends, wherein the Middle East and North Africa’s oil-exporting economies were supported by the spike in oil prices that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. On the other hand, the growth of economies in non-oil exporting countries has slowed. These include MENA oil importers such as Djibouti, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, the West Bank, and Gaza.
The analysis projected a significant shift from 2022, when GCC nations expanded 5.6 percentage points faster, to just 0.9 percentage points by 2024 between the growth difference between GCC oil exporters and developing oil importers.
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