Page 41 - Aamir Rehman - Dubai & Co Global Strategies for Doing Business in the Gulf States-McGraw-Hill (2007)

Lines in the Sand: The GCC in the Broader Middle East 27

neighbor Libya (once under Italian control), they consist of coastal
cities and very sparsely populated desert and countryside regions.
Algeria enjoys significant natural gas reserves, providing
10
about a quarter of the EU’s gas imports, and Morocco’s tourism
industry is the strongest in the group, boasting the popular vacation
destinations of Tangiers, Casablanca, and Marrakesh. As illustrated
in Figure 1.3, the states of the North African cluster have
modest—but respectable by developing market standards—GDP
per capita.

Figure 1.3 North Africa’s income is modest (Source: IMF)

Libya’s high GDP per capita is boosted by its sizable oil
exports. Like other countries in the cluster, Libya’s income distribu-
tion (especially of oil wealth) is highly uneven. Libya’s socialist eco-
nomic orientation and closed political system have limited the
capacity for broad-based economic development. It is also notewor-
thy that the countries with the largest populations—Egypt and
Sudan—have the lowest GDP per capita.
Table 1.1 presents an overview of relevant historical, demo-
graphic, economic, and other facts about the broader Middle East.