2005 Economic Developments and Prospects : Oil Booms and Revenue Management

The first in a series of annual reports, the 2005 MENA Economic Developments and Prospects report sheds light on the recent key economic developments in the region and the forces underlying the region’s diverse economic outcomes. It analyzes the region’s short-term growth prospects given global forecasts and current structural features of the economies, as well as the region’s prospects for longer-term growth based upon progress in implementing comprehensive structural reforms. With economic headlines increasingly devoted to the rise in oil prices and what this implies for the MENA region, this first issue devotes particular attention to this theme, analyzing the impact of the oil price shock on the MENA region in terms of its relative size, its transmission channels throughout the broader region, and the manner in which windfall revenues have been managed.