Arab economy needs improvement, debts increase $50,000 each minute

A report issued by the Arab Economic Research Society in Cairo said that the Arab economy suffers from repeated crises, on top of which are high external debts, weak production, inability to compete in international markets, lack of coordination among the Arab countries, a great number of barriers hindering the free exchange of trade, insufficiency of modern technology, in addition to the small volume of external investments in the Arab world.

Arab debts reached $136 billion and increase by $50,000 each minute. They are expected to reach $262 billion by the end of the century.

The report added that the debts were brought on mainly by Arab countries' food imports. The Arab countries import about 60% of their needs of grains, 70% of their needs of sugar, 30% of their needs of meat, in addition to more that 100 million tons of different kinds of food.

The Arab countries get only 1% of the volume of the international investments due to the unstable security and political environment some Arab countries are witnessing. Arab countries are also spending huge sums of money on arms deals, the Arab countries buy 40 % of the world's arms trade.

The Arab Agency for Insuring Investments recorded the main factors in the Arab economy and found out that the growth rate in 13 Arab countries is 7.4%. The budget deficit was also found to be improving in 8 countries. The biggest deficit was in Kuwait in 1996 as it reached 18.4% of the GDP, followed by Lebanon in which the deficit rate was 18%.