Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the impact of falling oil and commodities prices on resource-exporting countries. Last week, Nigeria’s Senate passed President Muhammadu Buhari’s proposed 2016 budget, which projected a deficit of $15 billion due to falling oil prices. In an email interview, Matthew Page, an international affairs fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, discussed the impact of falling oil prices on Nigeria’s economy and politics. WPR: How realistic is President Buhari’s latest proposed budget, and what are the implications of the budget’s $15 billion deficit? Matthew Page: Stubbornly low crude oil [...]
Editor’s note: This article is part of an ongoing WPR series on the impact of falling oil and commodities prices on resource-exporting countries. Earlier this month, Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos announced he was cutting the national budget by 3 percent due to falling oil prices. In an email interview, Christian Gómez, an international development professional, discussed the impact of falling commodities prices on Colombia’s economy. WPR: How has the relative significance of oil and commodities exports to Colombia’s economy evolved in the recent past, and what effect have falling commodities prices had on the economy and public spending and [...]
In 2016, Kuwait faces a combination of domestic and regional challenges arising from looming uncertainty over succession, the decline in international oil prices and the threat from radical groups such as the so-called Islamic State. Each of those issues has the potential to bring an end to the relative political stability that Kuwait has enjoyed since its most recent legislative election in July 2013. The risk for Kuwait’s ruling officials is that the intervening years of political calm have masked, but not resolved, many of the underlying socio-political and economic triggers of discontent that surfaced in 2011 and 2012 and [...]
