Following to the oil price crash and the coronavirus crisis, the Arab Gulf countries are set to accumulate as much as US$490 billion in combined government deficits between 2020 and 2023, S&P Global Ratings said on Monday. The six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)—Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)—include OPEC’s largest producers Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait. Those countries have been hit by the double whammy of low oil prices and the COVID-19 pandemic this year, which has strained their fiscal positions and reduced government buffers in their sovereign wealth funds. The price crash and the reduced demand for oil in the pandemic have already forced the world’s top oil exporter, Saudi Arabia, to triple its value-added tax (VAT) and suspend cost-of-living allowances as part of a new round of painful austerity measures to save the Kingdom’s finances. Last week, […]