Moussa calls for creating Arab economic bloc
Regional, Politics, 12/10/2001

Secretary-General of Arab League, Amr Moussa, called for creating an Arab economic bloc to face up to regional and international blocs.

Also, he called for taking steps to establish a major Arab trade area, a common Arab market, removing customs obstacles, and enlarging trade scope.

Addressing the meeting of the ministerial council of the session 74 of the Arab Economic Unity Council (AEUC), Moussa unveiled the presence of difficulties to hold the council meetings.

Moussa proposed holding the meetings at the level of Prime Ministers once every year in November.

On his part, (AEUC) Secretary-General Ahmad Goweili said that Arab states exported 60 million tonnes of food commodities annually.

He highlighted the negative aspects lied in the increase of unemployment rates which reached 20%. He noted that the food gap reached 13 billion dollar annually.

On imports of Arab oil, Goweili said that they had increased last October due to climbing up of prices to 61 billion dollar.

However, he expected that Arab countries would lose the same value this year owing to decline of oil prices.

He noted that the standard of living of an Arab citizen deteriorated.

He pointed out that the per capita income reached 2500 dollar annually according to estimations of 2000.

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