Arab Spring Turns to Economic Winter on More Joblessness – Bloomberg
To create jobs for their young populations, Arab economies need to
integrate, according to an Oxford University study published in December
by Adeel Malik and Bassem Awadallah, a former Jordanian finance
minister. It highlights restrictions on the movement of investment,
goods and people across borders.
The result, in an Arab world with a population of 350 million, is
“insignificant” levels of internal trade and regional markets that are
“cut off from each other and from the rest of the world,” they wrote. It
can be cheaper for a Jordanian company to import from the U.K. than
from nearby Lebanon, while “visa requirements for traveling within the
region can sometimes be as cumbersome as the journey itself.
Whoever takes office will have to win back people like Mohammed,
Ahmed and the others camped outside the Libyan Embassy trying to flee
Egypt. Poverty and unemployment have clouded their view of the
revolution they supported.
“There is no change,” said Mohammed. “We want to feel that we have
rights in our own country. Who feels that way?” he asked, looking at the
men gathered around him. Most replied: “No one!”
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