The International Monetary Fund has warned against depleting the financial wealth of Gulf countries within 15 years if they do not undertake rapid financial structural reforms to avoid this.
According to ArabiaNet, the fund has linked its warning to its expectation that global oil demand will peak in the next two decades.
In its latest report, the fund stressed that changes in modern oil extraction technologies have raised oil supplies from old and new sources.
He said that increasing concerns about the environment also affect the world’s tendencies to gradually move away from oil, according to the report.
The report stressed that the Gulf countries began some important reforms a while ago to reduce their dependence on oil for their resources, but those reforms are not enough.
While the six Gulf states account for a fifth of global oil production, their dependence on oil still reaches, at best, 70%.
The report stated that the collapse of oil prices in mid-2014 had caused great financial damage to these countries, and had to borrow to cover the deficit in their budgets.
The Fund estimated the loss of the Gulf states as a result of the decline in oil prices by 300 billion dollars until 2018.
The fund saw at the end of the report that the Gulf states are on the right track in their reforms, but at the same time he warned that these reforms should be implemented more quickly, in addition to the importance of the state reducing its spending and adopting more stringent financial systems.
This report highlights Saudi Arabia and the Vision 2030, which began to be implemented years ago and which relies mainly on reducing dependence on oil.
