Qatar Economic Outlook Issue Number 13

Part 1: Economic Outlook 2021 - 2023 
5 
of enough financial resources to face the 
negative repercussions of measures to 
contain the spread of the virus, especially the 
high unemployment rates. An additional, and 
crucial, consideration is the gap in the levels 
of rates of decline in per capita GDP, which 
has decreased by 6.3% for emerging and 
developing economies compared to about 
2.8% for advanced economies, which in turn 
has thrust at least 95 million people around 
the world into extreme poverty.
Therefore, the international community, as 
indicated in (Box 1-1), is studying ways to 
adopt sustainable economic policies that lead 
to recovery from the fallout, building 
economies that are more developed and 
inclusive, and greener - that is, taking into 
account the negative environmental aspects 
of returning to “business as usual” (See 
climate change section at the end of this 
part)
World Bank Forecast for the 
Middle East 
The World Bank published its forecasts for 
2021-2022 in the “Global Economic 
Prospects” report issued at the beginning of 
June 2021. As usual, WB forecasts are close 
to those of the IMF, but the World Bank report 
contains more detailed data for countries in 
the Middle East and North Africa, including 
the categorization of the region’s GDP 
forecasts according to whether the countries 
are oil exporters or importers, as well as 
according to the components of the 
expenditure approach (refer to Table (1-2)). 
The Bank projected that the MENA region 
would grow by a subdued 2.4% in 2021, then 
rise to 3.5% in 2022. Most of this growth 
comes from oil-importing countries, followed 
by oil-exporting countries by 2.3%. This 
includes the GCC countries, which are 
modeled to achieve growth of 2.2% in 2021