Gulf economies will experience a combined contraction of 7.6 percent this year because of the oil price crash, a senior IMF official has forecast. This is a sharp downward revision from an earlier forecast by the international lender, which saw the Gulf economies—the six states that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council—experiencing negative growth of 2.7 percent. The previous forecast was released in April. “The oil sector will shrink sharply by around 7.0 percent and it will be accompanied by a drop in the non-oil sector also,” said Jihad Azour, director of the Middle East and Central Asia department of the International Monetary Fund said at a webinar this week. In June, the IMF had warned Saudi Arabia’s economy, which is the biggest in the region, would suffer a 6.8-percent contraction this year. This was a substantial downward revision on an April forecast that saw the largest economy in […]