Recovery to gather pace

The recovery in the MENA region will be stronger than most anticipate over the coming quarters. The Gulf economies are set to benefit from rising oil output and fiscal stimulus, while Egypt’s cyclical upturn also has further to run. Fragile balance sheets mean that we think growth will be disappointingly weak in some of the region’s smaller economies. But for the region as a whole, we expect GDP growth of 3.8% this year and 3.5% in 2019, up from 1.4% in 2017.