Chart of The WeekExpanding Trade Across The Maghreb
By Ramzy Al Amine, Jean-François Dauphin, and Alexei Kireyev
In 1989, the five Maghreb countries—Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia—established the Arab Maghreb Union to promote cooperation and economic integration. Thirty years later, there is still a largely untapped potential for regional trade among Maghreb countries. […]
The Art of Balance
Worsening terms of trade, and the persistent strength of imports tied to investment spending have had a substantial impact on China’s currency account surplus. Economists here at the IMF suggest they account for close to two-thirds of that decline since 2007. But as I said above, there is little evidence that consumption is rising as a share of GDP. Yes, China is increasingly becoming a source of final consumer demand for the world economy, but its imports of consumer goods are growing at a slower pace than its imports of machinery and equipment.