This book summarizes the constraints to and opportunities for deepening economic integration within the MENA region and beyond. Trade and investment reform are discussed together with physical connectivity, cross-border trade facilitation, infrastructure networks, and the vital role of logistics.

The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is an economically diverse region. Despite undertaking economic reforms in many countries, and having considerable success in avoiding crises and achieving macroeconomic stability, the region’s economic performance in the past 30 years has been below potential. This paper takes stock of the region’s relatively weak performance, explores the reasons for this out come, and proposes an agenda for urgent reforms.

Critical examinations of efforts to make governments more efficient and responsive Political upheavals and civil wars in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) have obscured efforts by many countries in the region to reform their public sectors. Unwieldy, unresponsive—and often corrupt—governments across the region have faced new pressure, not least from their publics, to improve the quality of public services and open up their decisionmaking processes. Some of these reform efforts were under way and at least partly successful before the outbreak of the Arab Spring in 2010. Reform efforts have continued in some countries despite the many upheavals since then. This book offers a comprehensive assessment of a wide range of reform efforts in nine countries. In six cases the reforms targeted core systems of government: Jordan's restructuring of cabinet operations, the Palestinian Authority's revision of public financial management, Morocco's voluntary retirement program, human resource management reforms in Lebanon, an e-governance initiative in Dubai, and attempts to improve transparency in Tunisia. Five other reform efforts tackled line departments of government, among them Egypt's attempt to improve tax collection and Saudi Arabia's work to improve service delivery and bill collection. Some of these reform efforts were more successful than others. This book examines both the good and the bad, looking not only at what each reform accomplished but at how it was implemented. The result is a series of useful lessons on how public sector reforms can be adopted in MENA.

Individual countries of the Maghreb have achieved substantial progress on trade, but, as a region they remain the least integrated in the world. The share of intraregional trade is less than 5 percent of their total trade, substantially lower than in all other regional trading blocs around the world. Geopolitical considerations and restrictive economic policies have stifled regional integration. Economic policies have been guided by country-level considerations, with little attention to the region, and are not coordinated. Restrictions on trade and capital flows remain substantial and constrain regional integration for the private sector.

The oil market is undergoing fundamental change. New technologies are increasing the supply of oil from old and new sources, while rising concerns over the environment are seeing the world gradually moving away from oil. This spells a significant challenge for oil-exporting countries, including those of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) who account for a fifth of the world’s oil production. The GCC countries have recognized the need to reduce their reliance on oil and are all implementing reforms to diversify their economies as well as fiscal and external revenues. Nevertheless, as global oil demand is expected to peak in the next two decades, the associated fiscal imperative could be both larger and more urgent than implied by the GCC countries’ existing plans.

From American master Ward Just, returning to his trademark territory of "Forgetfulness "and "The Weather in Berlin," an evocative portrait of diplomacy and desire set against the backdrop of America's first lost war

China and India's spectacular economic rise over the last two decades has accelerated their trade and investment flows with the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), particularly with the oil-producing countries. And while these flows are still small, China and India's presence in the region is on the rise. This report focuses on the following questions: what have been evolution and the impact of MENA's trade and investment relations with China and India? what actions can be taken to maximize the benefits from these relations and to enhance MENA's international integration? The main findings indicate that the region as a whole has benefited from the rise of China and India in terms of better terms of trade, significant increases in oil and gas exports, and cheaper imports. However, producers of industrial goods have been negatively-and in a few cases severely-affected by competition with the two Asian countries in both third and domestic markets. While China and India are investing more in MENA, they are contributing very little to job creation or to the transfer and diffusion of technology. Faster growth in the two Asian countries-and the associated higher demand for energy-will increase revenues from oil and the difficult choices associated with their management. For the labor-abundant, non oil-producing countries, competition with China and India will increase. But the lack of competitive manufacturing industries and services, the insufficient attention given in the past to building technological capabilities and promoting openness and entrepreneurship are constraining their ability to respond to competition. They need to accelerate productivity to tackle unemployment, especially among youth. This may require the broader institutional changes seen in China and India-suggesting the importance of a pragmatic reform agenda that can accelerate productivity, trade, and investment in the region.