Middle East & Africa

Egypt ^New
With around 149 companies of the nearly 300 original public sector companies left to be privatized, the Egyptian government raised eyebrows when it announced it would end the sale of public assets, replacing the initiative with what Minister of Investment Mahmoud Mohieldin terms the ‘asset management program for state-owned enterprises.’
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Middle East ^New
South Africa must ramp up its manufacturing output and strengthen its exports to achieve healthy economy growth even as Israel is suffering from a sliding PMI due to sluggish domestic and international demand.
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South Africa ^Updated
South Africa officially fell into recession for the first time in 17 years in May 2009, cutting short its decade long period of expansion. However, with the help of a string of instantaneous measures, South Africa managed to pull out of the recession as soon as November 2009, when it recorded a tiny but significant growth of 0.9% in the third quarter.
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Morocco ^Updated
When the global financial crisis hit the world, Morocco was remarkably resilient. The country’s prudence in the past came to the rescue. Strong macroeconomic policies, limited exposure to foreign financial markets, stringent banking supervision and sufficient international reserves ensured that Morocco’s problems were temporary.
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Israel ^Updated
Now that the worst of the economic fallout from the global financial crisis is in the past, Israel can focus on administering macroeconomic policies that will sustain the country’s growth, which bounded up by 4.4% in the fourth quarter of 2009, its fastest rate in two years.
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