MENA’s Financing Needs: All of the developing
countries in the region are in need of financing.
Cheap oil and lack of fiscal adjustments have severely
deteriorated MENA’s fiscal space. An overall fiscal
surplus of about 2 percent of GDP in 2013 is expected
to turn into a deficit of 9.2 percent of GDP in 2015 for
MENA as a whole. By the same token, MENA’s
external account surplus of the past two years is
expected to turn into a deficit of about 2.6 percent of
GDP in 2015. The main reasons are falling oil prices
which started in 2014 and reduced the surplus in the
group of oil exporters by 50 percent, and weak
economic recovery in the Euro area, which has
reduced external demand for oil and non-oil exports.