The IMF forecasts that Qatar’s economy will contract by 8.6% in 2026, before bouncing back with 8.6% growth next year. <\/p>\n
It also predicts that Iran’s neighbour, Iraq, will take an economic hit this year from the war, with a slowdown of 6.8%. But it is expected to recover to 11.3% growth in 2027.<\/p>\n
A country’s economic resilience will depend on a number of factors, the IMF said, including the damage to energy infrastructure, dependence on the Strait of Hormuz and availability of alternative export routes.<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia, for example, has its East-West pipeline which runs from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea and can pump up to 7 million barrels of oil per day.<\/p>\n
Saudi’s growth will slow in 2026 but the economy is still expected to expand by 3.1%, and is projected to grow by 4.5% next year.<\/p>\n
The IMF said most Middle East oil exporters are forecast for an upturn next year “based on the assumption that energy production and transportation are normalized over the next few months”.<\/p>\n
But it cautioned that this assumption “may need to be revised if the duration of the conflict extends and the degree of damage suffered gets reassessed”.<\/p>\n
The IMF also cut its expectations for China’s economic growth this year, predicting it will grow by 4.4% in 2026, down from the 4.5% increase it had forecast in January.<\/p>\n
Its projection that China’s economy will grow by 4% in 2027 was unchanged.<\/p>\n
One country that has benefited from the surge in oil prices is Russia, according to IMF forecasts. <\/p>\n
The Russian economy is expected to grow by 1.1% this year and next, ahead of previous predictions of 0.8% and 1% respectively.<\/p>\n
Russia had been hit by a series of sanctions after it launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than four years ago.<\/p>\n
In March, Trump removed restrictions on exports of Russian oil as global prices soared.<\/p>\n
He also temporarily lifted sanctions on 140 million barrels of Iranian oil for 30 days.<\/p>\n
The European Commissioner for finance has warned against countries easing sanctions against Russia, arguing the country was “emerging as a winner from this war”.<\/p>\n
“Energy prices are up, and that gives additional revenues for Russia’s war machine,” Valdis Dombrovskis told an event on the sidelines of the IMF summit in Washington.<\/p>\n
“Now is not the time to ease the pressure on Russia.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The IMF forecasts that Qatar’s economy will contract by 8.6% in 2026, before bouncing back with 8.6% growth…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":531482,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-531481","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531481","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=531481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/531481\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/531482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=531481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=531481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=531481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}