Publication: Gulf Economic Update, Fall 2023: Structural Reforms and Shifting Social Norms to Increase Women's Labor Force Participation
Loading...
Published
2024-01-11
ISSN
Date
2024-01-11
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) economies have been a bright spot in an otherwise gloomy economic landscape. Average growthin the GCC surpassed 7 percent in 2022 led by Saudi Arabia, its biggest economy, which was globally the fastest growing large economy. This growth was not just a result of buoyant hydrocarbon prices but also continued growth of non-oil sectors. The latter was the result of persistent structural reforms undertaken by several GCC countries to improve the investment environment, promote flexible labor markets, and encourage women to join the labor market. GCC countries have used the windfall revenues from oil and gas to rebuild their buffers, pay down their debt, and shore-up their sovereign wealth funds. They have also sought to protect their vulnerable populations with continued subsidies on food, fuel, and utilities. Such policies have limited the impact of inflation on the domestic economy. Finally, GCC countries have also used their financial muscle to support economically weaker countries in the region. The stellar growth of 2022 is slowing down and growth is expected to moderate to 1 percent in 2023 before picking up again to 3.6 percent in 2024. The decline in economic activity in 2023 is driven by consecutive production cut decisions by OPEC+ in an effort to stabilize global oil prices. However, non-oil GDP continues its growth trajectory reaching 3.9 percent, resulting weaker integration between oil and non-oil sectors. To maintain this track record, GCC countries will need to continue to exercise prudent macroeconomic management, stay the course with structural reforms, and increase non-oil exports. Downside risks remain and it would be amiss not to mention them. The conflict in the Middle East presents major risks to the region and the GCC outlook if it extends or expands to include other regional players. While it is too early to quantify the impact and channels of the conflict, we already witness a 4 percentsurge in global oil futures. Although China is bouncing back after emerging from tight Covid-19 lockdowns, troubles in the real estate sector could still disrupt this trajectory. Persistent high inflation in the world’s major economies has not been entirely vanquishedsuggesting a high interest rate environment for a longer period. Windfall revenues are anticipated as a result of higher oil prices driven by the conflict in the Middle East. However, the extent and duration of the conflict will play a pivotal role in determining economicramifications not only on energy markets but also on regional financial and trade markets and overall economic confidence. The Special Focus section of the report discusses the power of structural reforms and social norms in advancing female labor force participation in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia experienced an unprecedented surge in female labor force participation since 2016 as a result of: (i) changing regulations and the removal of legal barriers, shifting social norms, (ii) the implementation of sound structural reforms and (iii) effective government communications. Saudi Arabia’s success in increasing female labor force participation from 17.4 percent in 2017 to 36 percent in 2023 offers important lessons to other countries in the region and the world.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2024. Gulf Economic Update, Fall 2023: Structural Reforms and Shifting Social Norms to Increase Women's Labor Force Participation. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/40880 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
Publication Gulf Economic Update, Fall 2021(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-10)The economic outlook for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) economies appears far rosier now than it did even six months ago. Increased investment and consumption both public and private are contributing to growth while inflation remains subdued in most economies except for Saudi Arabia where it is currently at 5.5 percent and expected to fall sharply as the impact of last year’s Value-Added Tax (VAT) hike falls away. Despite this rosy picture, the authorities should continue to follow the path of prudent macroeconomic management consolidating their fiscal balances, moving ahead with the introduction of VAT in Qatar and Kuwait and focusing on reducing the role of the state in economic management. UAE’s government related entities especially those in the construction sector deserve a careful review to ensure that their borrowing remains sustainable and to adjust to the new conditions.Publication Gulf Economic Update, Spring 2023(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-06-27)The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) economies performed strongly in 2022. Amidst a year of economic uncertainty marked by inflation, geopolitical crises, and supply chain insecurity, the GCC region registered remarkable GDP growth of 7.3 percent in 2022. Progress made on structural reforms are bearing fruits on the economy. Despite the uptick, inflation remains relatively muted in comparison to other high-income countries. Looking ahead, the GCC region is projected to grow at a slower pace. The main contributors to this growth are private consumption, fixed investments, and government expenditures through looser fiscal policy in response to high oil revenues. However, downside risks to the outlook are numerous. Special Focus: Non-Communicable Diseases (NCDs) pose a major health burden to the population and governments of the GCC. NCDs are also a growing concern from an economic perspective. To mitigate the health and economic burden of NCDs, the region needs to scale up efforts to target the behavioral and environmental risk factors of NCDs. Effectively addressing NCDs requires a whole-of-government approach, and the effective implementation and monitoring of targeted, evidence-based solutions. Addressing the risk factors of NCDs requires an increased strategic focus on prevention over treatment, targeting of the young and adolescents, and the development and implementation of evidence-informed, cost effective, high impact interventions. Governance structures that can effectively mobilize, incentivize, and hold accountable the many non-health sectors in the implementation and monitoring of cost-effective interventions are critical.Publication Gulf Economic Update, August 2021(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-08-04)The COVID-19 pandemic and the decline in global oil demand and prices dealt the GCC countries a health crisis and a commodity market shock. The GCC’s aggregate GDP contracted by 4.8 percent in 2020 from 2019, with the growth outturns ranging from -3.7 in Qatar to an estimated -6.3 percent in Oman. The authorities responded to the pandemic with stringent health measures which helped contain the spread of the disease and saved lives but hurt economic activity. Following a year of economic distress, the GCC economies are expected to return to growth in 2021, buoyed by the global economic recovery, projected at 5.6 percent (upgraded by 1.5 percentage points from the projection in January 2021), the revival of global oil demand, expected at 96.5 billion barrels per day (from 91 billion barrels per day in 2020), and the rebound in international oil prices to an annual forecast average US$56 per barrel (now outpaced by an actual average US$61.45 in January-May 2021). The forecast is for an aggregate GCC GDP growth of 2.2 percent in 2021, roughly tracking the turnaround in high-income countries, with the outcomes ranging from 1.2 percent for the UAE to 2.4 percent for Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. Thereafter, economic growth in the GCC is expected to firm up to an annual average 3.3 percent for 2022-23. With rising oil prices in the first half of 2021, a potential upside scenario for the second half of the year sees improved current account balances being channeled directly to public sector savings. Because of the exposure to global oil demand and personal service industries and the continuing effects of the pandemic, downside risks to the outlook are also high. In this issue of the Gulf Economic Update, the focus is on fiscal revenues and structural reforms including strategic investments in digitalization and telecommunications. Strategic investment in advanced telecommunications technologies, including 5G, is underway in the GCC. But beyond capital spending on infrastructure, the telecommunications sector would benefit greatly from improvements in the legal, regulatory, and competition frameworks under which service providers operate.Publication Gulf Economic Update, Spring 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-06-03)The Gulf Economic Update (GEU) is the product of the Middle East and North Africa unit in the Macroeconomics, Trade, and Investment (MTI) Global Practice at the World Bank Group. It provides an update on key economic developments and policies in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries over the past six months, places them in a longer-term and global context and assesses the implications of these developments and other changes in policy on the outlook for the GCC. Its coverage ranges from the macro-economy to financial markets to indicators of human welfare and development. It is intended for a wide audience, including policymakers, business leaders, financial market participants, and the community of analysts and professionals engaged in the GCC.Publication Gulf Economic Update SPRING 2022(Washington, DC, 2022)The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries were characterized by a robust economic rebound from the pandemic in 2021 and the beginning of 2022 as well as a partial restoration of external and fiscal positions following deep plunges in 2020. The war in Ukraine is projected to provide a windfall for the GCC; it has also placed energy security at the forefront of major importers’ agenda, which could accelerate the global green growth transition. The faster and bolder efforts to decarbonize the global economy, which the war in Ukraine is likely to speed up, implies that it is critical to invest the windfall in the GCC’s economic and environment transition. GCC countries are facing limits to the oil economy on which they have flourished for the last seventy years. GCC countries face twin challenges of (i) how to move to a more sustainable growth model that is less dependent on oil and downstream petroleum sectors and that can provide valuable jobs for their inhabitants while (ii) managing the transition to a global low-carbon economic environment that could see oil revenues greatly reduced within the next few decades. The current situation has sometimes been portrayed as a threat to the GCC or at the very least as a trade-off between faster growth and climate sustainability. However, this special focus section reframes the discussion by focusing on the opportunities for the region to restructure energy subsidies. to become renewable-energy powerhouses, and the importance of getting prices right for an enabling environment that can place the private sector at the forefront of the new growth model. The section also highlights the fiscal space that can be created by re-thinking energy subsidies and provides a political economy sensitive approach to addressing the concerns of households and industry. Linking the expected savings to investments in renewables and incentives for increased entrepreneurship and innovative sectors could represent a solution to one of the GCC’s greatest challenges, producing high income jobs for its youth.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Morocco Economic Update, Winter 2025(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-04-03)Despite the drought causing a modest deceleration of overall GDP growth to 3.2 percent, the Moroccan economy has exhibited some encouraging trends in 2024. Non-agricultural growth has accelerated to an estimated 3.8 percent, driven by a revitalized industrial sector and a rebound in gross capital formation. Inflation has dropped below 1 percent, allowing Bank al-Maghrib to begin easing its monetary policy. While rural labor markets remain depressed, the economy has added close to 162,000 jobs in urban areas. Morocco’s external position remains strong overall, with a moderate current account deficit largely financed by growing foreign direct investment inflows, underpinned by solid investor confidence indicators. Despite significant spending pressures, the debt-to-GDP ratio is slowly declining.Publication Classroom Assessment to Support Foundational Literacy(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2025-03-21)This document focuses primarily on how classroom assessment activities can measure students’ literacy skills as they progress along a learning trajectory towards reading fluently and with comprehension by the end of primary school grades. The document addresses considerations regarding the design and implementation of early grade reading classroom assessment, provides examples of assessment activities from a variety of countries and contexts, and discusses the importance of incorporating classroom assessment practices into teacher training and professional development opportunities for teachers. The structure of the document is as follows. The first section presents definitions and addresses basic questions on classroom assessment. Section 2 covers the intersection between assessment and early grade reading by discussing how learning assessment can measure early grade reading skills following the reading learning trajectory. Section 3 compares some of the most common early grade literacy assessment tools with respect to the early grade reading skills and developmental phases. Section 4 of the document addresses teacher training considerations in developing, scoring, and using early grade reading assessment. Additional issues in assessing reading skills in the classroom and using assessment results to improve teaching and learning are reviewed in section 5. Throughout the document, country cases are presented to demonstrate how assessment activities can be implemented in the classroom in different contexts.Publication World Development Report 2006(Washington, DC, 2005)This year’s Word Development Report (WDR), the twenty-eighth, looks at the role of equity in the development process. It defines equity in terms of two basic principles. The first is equal opportunities: that a person’s chances in life should be determined by his or her talents and efforts, rather than by pre-determined circumstances such as race, gender, social or family background. The second principle is the avoidance of extreme deprivation in outcomes, particularly in health, education and consumption levels. This principle thus includes the objective of poverty reduction. The report’s main message is that, in the long run, the pursuit of equity and the pursuit of economic prosperity are complementary. In addition to detailed chapters exploring these and related issues, the Report contains selected data from the World Development Indicators 2005‹an appendix of economic and social data for over 200 countries. This Report offers practical insights for policymakers, executives, scholars, and all those with an interest in economic development.Publication World Development Report 1987(New York: Oxford University Press, 1987)This report, consisting of two parts, is the tenth in the annual series assessing development issues. Part I reviews recent trends in the world economy and their implications for the future prospects of developing countries. It stresses that better economic performance is possible in both industrial and developing countries, provided the commitment to economic policy reforms is maintained and reinforced. In regard to the external debt issues, the report argues for strengthened cooperation among industrial countries in the sphere of macroeconomic policy to promote smooth adjustment to the imbalances caused by external payments (in developing countries). Part II reviews and evaluates the varied experience with government policies in support of industrialization. Emphasis is placed on policies which affect both the efficiency and sustainability of industrial transformation, especially in the sphere of foreign trade. The report finds that developing countries which followed policies that promoted the integration of their industrial sector into the international economy through trade have fared better than those which insulated themselves from international competition.Publication Argentina Country Climate and Development Report(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2022-11)The Argentina Country Climate and Development Report (CCDR) explores opportunities and identifies trade-offs for aligning Argentina’s growth and poverty reduction policies with its commitments on, and its ability to withstand, climate change. It assesses how the country can: reduce its vulnerability to climate shocks through targeted public and private investments and adequation of social protection. The report also shows how Argentina can seize the benefits of a global decarbonization path to sustain a more robust economic growth through further development of Argentina’s potential for renewable energy, energy efficiency actions, the lithium value chain, as well as climate-smart agriculture (and land use) options. Given Argentina’s context, this CCDR focuses on win-win policies and investments, which have large co-benefits or can contribute to raising the country’s growth while helping to adapt the economy, also considering how human capital actions can accompany a just transition.