The Middle East is in need to create millions of job opportunities
Regional, Economics, 4/18/2005

A World Bank report said that oil revenues which increased during the few past months are still not enough to cover the tremendous needs to create jobs for the young generation in the Middle East.

The report added that it is impetus to create 100 million new jobs during the next 20 years in order to contain the new arrivals to the job market and the current unemployed.

Growth rate in the region during the two past years reached 5.6% in comparison with 3.6% during the 1990s. This increase is mainly because of the increase in oil prices and this resulted in increasing oil revenues at a rate of 75% between 2001 and 2004.

The report expects growth to reach 4.9% in 2005 and to decrease next year to 4.3%. But the report explained that the increase in the growth per capita is still beyond the rate registered in other areas of the world.

The World Bank proposed three possibilities to improve work conditions: opening up the markets vastly, encouraging the development of the private sector where the public sector is still predominant in most cases, varying the economic activities of the oil sector.

The report said that many of the countries of the Middle East and north Africa are in a position enabling them to harvest likely profits from the rebuilding of Iraq.

It explained while the invasion of Iraq had a very limited impact on the Middle East and north Africa region, and its rebuilding will be of great benefits on the region.

The report indicated that the Middle East and north Africa region still have a long way onward, stressing that generally the region does not cope with the pace of world progress in terms of reform, while the region achieved notable trade reforms.

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