Rym Ayadi and Salim Gadi
2.1. c reatIon oF the Gcc and ItS r elatIonS wIth the eu
2.1.1. GCC integration: drivers, objectives and progress to date
The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is a regional grouping bringing together Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Home to a population of 43 million people in 2012, the region exhibits high heterogene-ity in socioeconomic development. With GDP per capita of between €34,000 and
€54,000, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates are the wealthiest coun-tries, whereas Saudi Arabia, Oman and Bahrain are less wealthy with GDP per capita ranging from €12,000 to €13,000. Human capital is highest in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar, with literacy rates of between 91% and 94%, whereas in the other countries literacy rates are lower (Annex 4). The GCC is well known for its hydrocarbons endowments, but since their discovery and the beginning of oil exploitation in the 1970s, reserves have decreased substantially in most coun-tries, which has led governments to engage in economic diversification policies.
The remaining hydrocarbons are concentrated in a few countries: in 2013, Sau-di Arabia and Kuwait accounted for 16% and 6% of world’s oil reserves, respec-tively, and Qatar for 13% of global natural gas reserves (Annex 5).
Security motives were the driving force behind the GCC’s creation. In the af-termath of the first Gulf War between Iran and Iraq, the countries of the Arabian Peninsula decided to initiate a move towards regional integration with a view to dealing with possible security threats. Countries in the region share many characteristics, but notwithstanding their commonalities, some important
dif-ferences exist. For example, Bahrain and Kuwait have somewhat open political systems with parliamentary elections and a written constitution, whereas Sau-di Arabia more closely resembles an absolute monarchy.
After the GCC’s creation on 25 May 1985, besides reinforcing security coop-eration, states in the region have initiated a move towards regional integration similar to that of the EU, with the objectives of creating a customs union and adopting a single currency by 2010. To do so, they established a Secretariat Gen-eral in 1981, as well as a number of technical organisations subsequently: the GCC Patent Office (1992), the GCC Standardization Organisation (2001) and the Monetary Council (2009). Despite their willingness to become a unified region-al grouping, progress has been slow and uneven. The GCC customs union was only established in 2005, Bahrain and Oman signed free trade agreements (FTAs) with the US in 2004 and 2006 respectively, and, after numerous postponements, talks on the creation of the common currency have been frozen after Oman and the United Arab Emirates decided to opt out. Nevertheless, the process of region-al integration advanced, and in 2008 member countries established a common market with the creation of the Gulf Customs Union.
Several factors can be put forward to explain why progress in regional inte-gration has been slow. As oil and hydrocarbons producers, the GCC countries are competitors, which renders the necessary coordination of industrial policies in the region difficult. This similarity in production structures translates into very low rates of intra-regional trade; intra-GCC trade (imports and exports) averaged 7% between 1995 and 2011, compared to 63% for the EU and 23% for ASEAN countries (Figure 7). In the same vein, the region’s exposure to oil price vola-tility and the imperative of income diversification makes coordination of mone-tary policies difficult. GCC economies appear to be highly state-dominated, with governments holding important shares in the industrial and services sectors. For example, GCC governments retain significant ownership stakes in the country’s hydrocarbon sectors,45 and state-owned banks accounted for an average of 22%
of total banking assets in the region between 2003 and 2011, compared to 12%
in the EU15.46 Combined with the high degree of similarity in production struc-tures, the state’s presence in their respective economies is likely to complicate diversification and regional integration efforts, as governments might be reluc-tant to conduct imporreluc-tant privatisation47 programmes, despite their willingness
45 Raed Kombargi et al., Governance in the GCC Hydrocarbon Sector. The Right Time to Act, Booz &
Company, 21 June 2011, http://www.booz.com/global/home/what-we-think/reports-white-pa-pers/article-display/governance-hydrocarbon-sector-right-time.
46 Rym Ayadi and Willem Pieter de Groen, “Banking and Insurance in the GCC Countries: Is there Regulatory Convergence with the EU?”, in Sharaka Research Reports, No. 4 (July 2013), http://www.sharaka.eu/?p=1292.
47 Here, privatisation refers to the transfer of ownership of property or a business from a gov-ernment to a privately-owned entity.
to support the development of the private sector.
With reducing hydrocarbons dependence a key challenge for the GCC coun-tries, governments in the region have undertaken different strategies to meet this objective. The region’s biggest oil producer, Saudi Arabia, has chosen for example to develop manufacturing activities close to the oil sector, such as plastics, poly-mers and fertilisers, via the state-owned SABIC company. Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates have chosen to develop tourism, manufacturing and financial ac-tivities, while Qatar has opted to strengthen its gas and financial sector.48 These efforts seem to have yielded some results, as recent evidence shows that coun-tries in the region are reducing their dependence on commodities and are less vulnerable than before to fluctuations in the price thereof.49 More precisely, the Kuwaiti and Saudi Arabian manufacturing sectors appear to have “decoupled”
from the oil sector, while the Qatari economy is still affected by oil price swings (with the exception of its manufacturing sector).
As far as the patterns of GCC international trade in goods are concerned, ex-ports show a high degree of concentration. Compared to other economies, the GCC countries appear to be the most dependent on oil and gas. This suggests that their recent efforts to move away from oil dependence have failed to achieve meaningful results (Figure 8, Annex 1).
Trade protection, measured by the Overall Trade Restrictiveness Index (OTRI) developed by Kee et al.,50 is low by international standards (Figure 9). Given that GCC tariffs averaged 5% in 2009, the low value of the index suggests that coun-tries in the region do not resort excessively to non-tariff barriers for protectionist purposes. The low values of the OTRI could also be a reflection of the GCC coun-tries’ specialisation in hydrocarbons. Since the countries in the region are locked into the production of oil and its derivatives, overly high levels of trade protection can be detrimental to diversification efforts since inputs would cost more,
re-48 Michael Sturm et al., “The Gulf Cooperation Council Countries. Economic Structures, Re-cent Developments and Role in the Global Economy”, in ECB Occasional Paper Series, No. 92 (July 2008), http://www.ecb.europa.eu/pub/pdf/scpops/ecbocp92.pdf.
49 To assess whether the GCC countries have diversified, Basher uses as a measure the degree of business cycle synchronicity between different economic sectors. Syed Abul Basher, “Has the non-oil sector decoupled from oil sector? A case study of Gulf Cooperation Council Countries”, in MPRA Papers, 2 March 2010, http://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/21059.
50 The OTRI measures the uniform tariff equivalent of the tariff and non-tariff barriers (NTB) that would generate the same level of import value for a country in a given year. Tariffs can be based on Most Favored Nation (MFN) tariffs, which apply to all trading partners, or applied tariffs, which take into account bilateral trade preferences. The ad valorem equivalents of NTBs have been estimated by Kee et al. See Hiau Looi Kee, Alessandro Nicita and Marcelo Olarreaga, “Esti-mating Trade Restrictiveness Indices”, in The Economic Journal, Vol. 119, No. 534 (January 2009), p. 172-199, http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTRES/Resources/469232-1107449512766/
ecoj_2209.pdf. For a brief technical summary of the methodology see Annex 2 and World Bank, Overall Trade Restrictiveness Indices and Import Demand Elasticities, 2012, http://go.worldbank.
org/FG1KHXSP30.
moving incentives for companies and governments to foster the development of alternative production. Also, high tariff levels can lead to inflationary pressures in oil-producing countries, thus complicating macroeconomic management while running a risk of social unrest.
Fig. 7. Intra-regional exports and imports of selected trading blocs, 1995-2011 (% total trade in goods)
Note: see Annex 6 for country groupings used in this chapter.
Source: UNCTADstat.
Fig. 8. Concentration index of GCC and other economies’ exports, 1995-2011
-0.10 0.20 0.30 0.40 0.50 0.60 0.70
1995 2000 2005 2011
EU (European Union) Africa
Major hydrocarbon exporters
GCC
Source: UNCTADstat.
Fig. 9. GCC countries’ OTRI, 2009 (average tariff equivalent of tariff and non-tariff bar-riers across agricultural and manufactured products)
Source: World Bank, Overall Trade Restrictiveness Indices and Import Demand Elasticities, cit.
In addition to structural economic factors rendering regional integration dif-ficult, geopolitical factors can also explain why the GCC countries fail somewhat to behave as a unified bloc, despite their many common institutional character-istics. In 2004, for example, before the establishment of the customs union in 2005, Bahrain sidelined its other partners and signed an FTA with the US while reinforcing the US military presence in its territory in a bid to contain Iranian influence.
The GCC region’s resource endowments, the weaknesses in its economic integration and its growing importance in the Arab world have resulted in the development of important commercial and political links with other countries, chiefly with the US, which established itself as the guarantor of regional secu-rity against the threats to the region represented by Iran and Iraq. As a result of their international clout and their importance in their neighbourhood, GCC countries have concluded a number of international agreements, and partici-pate in regular international summits and negotiations.