Light at the end of the tunnel

After two years of turmoil, there is light at the end of the tunnel for some of the resource-poor Arab economies. But a recovery is unlikely to start until 2014 at the earliest. Next year, most of these countries are set to be battered as political tensions persist. The exception is Egypt. As the country edges closer to signing a deal with the IMF, we think that its GDP growth could accelerate markedly next year, returning to trend by 2014. Meanwhile, on the back of weaker expansion in hydrocarbon production, the oil-rich Gulf economies are set to slow. But some of these countries should still grow by around 4% in the next three years or so, beating most of the other global regions.