Determinants of Aggregate Imports in the GCC countries

The GCC countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) depend heavily on the outside world for the supply of most of their needs. This is because of the relatively weak productive capacity of these economies, due to lack of resources, particularly labor, materials and water. The aim of this paper is to examine the impact of the fluctuations in oil exports on GCC spending on imports and in particular, to analyze the long-run relationship between the imports of each GCC member and the macroeconomic components of final expenditure (exports, government consumption, investment and private consumption) using Johansen multivariate cointegration analysis.