Please join Carnegie and the IMF for a special event to mark the IMF’s upcoming publication, Promoting Inclusive Growth in the Middle East and North Africa: Challenges and Opportunities in a Post-Pandemic World.

The steady decline of global oil prices since June 2014 is shifting economic, political, and strategic calculations of key Middle East actors, and adding a new element of uncertainty at a time of increased regional conflict and polarization.

High oil prices are once again contributing to the fortunes of oil exporters at the expense of oil importers. But the MENA region as a whole continues to face the longer-term challenges of creating jobs and reining in spending.

The Arab Spring has toppled three governments and galvanized change across the Middle East. But fiscal, external and labor market imbalances are widening, and both new and old governments are under pressure to deliver simultaneously on political, economic, and social fronts.

The unprecedented change in the Middle East has created immediate challenges to maintaining social cohesion and macroeconomic stability. Over the longer-term, countries must define their own political, social, and economic transformations.

The Middle East and North Africa have seen more change in the last three months than in the previous fifty years and the current turmoil will have far-reaching and, in the short-run, adverse economic implications both within the region and beyond.

The unrest spreading throughout the Arab world will have significant economic implications for the region.

While almost every economy in the Middle East and North Africa region is projected to accelerate in 2011-2012, significant downside risks to this forecast remain.

With growth in most Middle Eastern and North African economies expected to accelerate in 2010 and 2011, their governments should focus on the severe structural policy challenges plaguing their medium term economic outlooks.

The economic outlook for the Gulf Cooperation Council remains encouraging, but the crisis has revealed financial sector vulnerabilities that need to be addressed in order to limit future disruptions of economic growth.