Oil exporters: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates
Developing oil exporters: Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen (in the latter three civil war and/or anti-government uprisings significantly disrupted production)
Oil importers: Jordan, Lebanon, Djibouti, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia
Population
377 million in 2011, up from 363 million in 2009
In Arab Spring countries, anywhere from 40 to 60 per cent of the population are estimated to be under 25, with the biggest youth bulge in Yemen and the smallest in Tunisia.
Fertility rates, while falling, drive the world’s second highest rate of population growth, of 1.8 per cent per year in 2011, compared with Europe’s 0.5 per cent.
Economy and jobs
The region’s Gross Domestic Product is almost $2.7 billion, half of that from six oil-exporting countries with just 12 per cent of the region’s population.
Economic growth averaged 4.9 per cent a year in the 2000s. It would have to reach 6 per cent a year to create 46 million jobs and reduce unemployment to the global norm of 6 per cent by 2020, according to Elena Ianchovichina, the World Bank’s lead economist in the region. — AP
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