Growth is forecasted to slow down for the Middle East and North Africa region. The war in Ukraine in 2022 exacerbated inflationary pressures as the world recovered from the COVID 19 pandemic-induced recession. The response by central banks to raise rates to curb inflation is slowing economic...

Covid-19. The Russian invasion of Ukraine. Commodity price volatility. The rise of global inflation and interest rates. Currency depreciations among indebted middle-income economies. And now, natural disasters. As a sequence of events, the consequences can be both tragic and long-lasting. After...

The global economy is in its third year of deceleration amidst declining inflation and oil prices. The MENA region grew at 1.9 percent in 2023 and is forecasted to grow at 2.7 percent in 2024. And for the first time since the pandemic, MENA oil exporters and importers will grow at similar rates....

Overconfident: How Economic and Health Fault Lines Left the Middle East and North Africa Ill-Prepared to Face COVID This report examines the region's economic prospects in 2021, forecasting that the recovery will be both tenuous and uneven as per capita GDP level stays below pre-pandemic levels....

The Middle East and North Africa is the most water scarce region in the world. Although studies have explored the effect of extreme weather events on agriculture, much less is known about the effect on businesses. Using geocoded firm-level data from the World Bank's Enterprise Surveys across the...

Increased labor mobility bears large potential benefits for human development and poverty reduction through various channels including more competitive global labor markets and increased efficiency in the matching of skills supply and demand. Bank support for enhanced and better managed...

While economic growth has been sustained for a number of years in many countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, this has not resulted in the creation of an adequate number of jobs and has succeeded, at best, in generating low-quality, informal jobs. While there is a great...