Public debt levels in the Middle East and North Africa are expected to rise to 54% of economic output by the end of this year from 46% in 2019, the fastest accumulation this century, the World Bank said on Friday.
Countries in the region were hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic last year and like the rest of the world, lockdown measures introduced to combat the spread of the virus left many of its economies in distress, the World Bank said in its first economic update of 2021. Despite global efforts to roll out vaccines, the economic situation remains volatile, it said.
The region is expected to see an uptick in its gross domestic product levels this year, after record economic contractions in several countries in 2020, the report said.
“But that recovery is unlikely to be strong enough to get the MENA region’s output back to pre-pandemic levels,” Ferid Belhaj, vice president for the Middle East and North Africa, wrote in the report, “the substantial borrowing that MENA governments had to incur to finance essential health and social protection measures boosted government debt dramatically.”
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