DUBAI: The International Monetary Fund’s growth forecast for the Middle East is at risk from rapidly falling oil prices and will be revised downward, Mohsin Khan, director of the Middle East and Central Asia department, said yesterday. The IMF’s growth forecast for 2009 is premised on oil prices averaging around $100 a barrel, he said. “I think it will be lower than that,” Khan said. Earlier yesterday, IMF forecast economic growth for the Gulf Arab region would slip to 6.6 percent in 2009 after a forecast 7.1 percent in 2008, and that inflation would ease to 10 percent in 2009 after 11.5 percent in 2008.
Gulf states to post budget surpluses
DUBAI: Gulf Arab oil exporters should continue to post budget surpluses if oil prices average $79 a barrel in 2009, but regional budgets would suffer from any sustained sharp drop in crude, Standard & Poors said yesterday. Expectations that a global recession will hit energy demand in the West and Asia, as well as the US dollar’s recent strength, have toppled crude prices.
Abu Dhabi steel prices decline
ABU DHABI: Steel prices in the Gulf Arab emirate of Abu Dhabi slipped between 8 percent and 20 percent in September as signs grew that demand was slowing across the region, official data showed yesterday. In Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates, the price of steel coils from Turkey plummeted 20 percent to 4,438 dirhams ($1,209) per ton in September from the previous month, data from the Department of Planning & Economy showed.
