Six months of conflict have wrought enormous economic disruption across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and with no sign of the situation normalizing, resilience remains essential. With the exception of Oman, positioned outside the Strait of Hormuz, the economies of the region’s oil exporters have been tested by the conflict that erupted on 28 February. The economic pain has not been evenly distributed, ranging from fiscal disruption in some GCC states to fiscal disaster in others. These divergences will inform each country’s policy priorities in the months and years ahead.
Broadly speaking, the GCC states can be placed in three groups; Oman sits alone as the only one to have suffered no disruption; then there is Saudi Arabia and the UAE which have shielded themselves from the worst of the pain due to their ability to redraw trade routes to minimize the impact of the strait’s closure; finally there is the vulnerable trio of Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain which have no bypass options and have suffered the most violent economic shocks as a result. (CONTINUED - 2245 WORDS)
