MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 13th July, 2020) The middle Eastern oil exporting countries, particularly the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, are forecast to lose over $270 billion in revenues this year due to the energy crisis, Jihad Azour, director of the International Monetary Fund's Middle East and Central Asia Department, said on Monday.
"In 2020, we saw a massive drop in oil price to levels that we didn't see in the last two decades. In real terms, we reached rates that we haven't seen see since 1973. Therefore, this had with the OPEC+ cuts in production, had very strong impact on oil revenues. We project that oil revenues for oil exporters, in particular, GCC, to drop by more than $270 billion this year," Azour said at a press conference.
The recovery of oil revenues will depend on the demand tendencies and on whether the OPEC+ deep cuts would be extended further, among other factors, the IMF official added.
In April, the IMF predicted that the MENA region could lose as much as $230 billion in oil revenues this year against the background of historically low oil prices, sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown measures.
