كشف الأمين العام لمجلس الوحدة الاقتصادية العربية السفير محمد الربيع أن ثورات الربيع العربي في كل من مصر وتونس وليبيا واليمن وسوريا خلفت خسائر اقتصادية تجاوزت أكثر من 100 مليار دولار جراء انخفاض الصادرات والإنتاج.
وقال الربيع في افتتاح الدورة 93 للمجلس برئاسة اليمن والمخصصة لمناقشة التأثيرات الاقتصادية لثورات الربيع العربى إن العالم مازال يرزح تحت وطأة الأزمة المالية والاقتصادية العالمية وأزمة منطقة اليورو، وتصاعد أسعار الغذاء.
وأشار في تصريحاته التي نشرتها صحيفة المدينة السعودية، إلى تأثر الوضع المالي والسياسات المالية للدول العربية في عام 2009 بتداعيات الأزمة العالمية، حيث تراجعت الإيرادات العامة، وخصوصاً الإيرادات النفطية في الدول العربية المصدرة للنفط، كما تسببت الأزمة في تباطؤ اقتصادي على الصعيد العالمي شمل معظم الدول العربية. انظرهنا
The Arab Spring and the "Unemployment Trap" by Prof. Ali Kadri
 Prior to the Arab Spring, the official rate of unemployment in the Arab World was the highest globally. The labour share was as low as a quarter of national income. Productivity was negative. If a more sensible method of assessing unemployment is carried out, more than half of the labour force could be considered unemployed. The real economy was de-industrialising and shrinking relative to oil rent, and its capacity to reemploy people perished.A propos, a 2004 technical report on economic performance in the Arab World stated that ‘the predisposition of major macroeconomic and demographic variables towards an inevitable collision implies that there is little space for argument over the unavoidability of change. The built-up of imbalances in a regional economy that does not expand at a rate commensurate with the demands of the demographic transition means that, unless the system experiences a chance occurrence of heavy oil rent fallout, change cannot be gauged as a matter of degree.’ This report took about a year in preparation, so these remarks were written sometime earlier when oil prices were at historically low levels. The chance occurrence of high oil prices did indeed take place soon after, a matter which became pellucidly clear in 2005. But the massive oil rents could not avert an inevitably violent political and, only political and not social so far, restructuring or what has come to be known as the Arab spring. Notwithstanding its mention of the welfare benefits of public sector employment, the report noted that ‘for every person finding a job in the eighties, there were two new entrants into the labour market reaching working age. By the late nineties, there were nearly four new entrants to every person finding a job. For a good part of two decades, the Arab Mashreq’s real wages have either declined or stood still while labour supply continued to outgrow labour demand.’ What the report however, did not say is that the underlying process generating unemployment was one of massive dispossession of the working population combined with supply-side economics. These two mechanisms of encroachment usually work together. On the one hand, wars - and there is no shortage of conflicts here – policies transferring public into private assets, including the rolling back of land reforms, and the curtailment of autonomous civil society, in particular, labour unions, de-valorise labour and existing wealth altogether. On the other, piecemeal policies of neo-liberalism facilitate the transfer of resources abroad at fire-sale prices and/or, subject to a system of prices, which is selfishly brokered by superior global powers. These are resources that could have otherwise been recirculated within the national economy and, consequently, contributed to sustaining a decent living condition for the working population. | |||
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