Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan<\/p>\n
The Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan region is facing conflict, exacting a serious human and economic toll and heightening geopolitical uncertainty. Disruptions to key energy supply routes and infrastructure have affected markets, driven financial volatility, and weakened the 2026 growth outlook. Excluding Iran, overall growth in the region is expected to slow from 4.0 percent in 2025 to 1.8 percent for 2026. This forecast stands 2.4 percentage points below the World Bank Group\u2019s January projections.\u00a0Sustained increases in energy prices are generating inflationary pressures through higher production costs and rising food prices, with effects extending well beyond the direct conflict zone. The April 2026 edition of the semi-annual Economic Update, titled Challenges of Conflict and Industrial Policy for Development, examines how the conflict is affecting economies across the region, the channels through which these impacts are transmitted, and the potential for industrial policies to drive growth and job creation.<\/p>\n
Press Release:\u00a0English<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0|\u00a0\u0627\u0644\u0639\u0631\u0628\u064a\u0629<\/a>|\u00a0Fran\u00e7ais<\/a><\/p>\n Learn More:\u00a0Report<\/a> | Publication page<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan The Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan, and Pakistan region is facing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,164],"class_list":{"0":"post-593785","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-business","11":"tag-economy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}