The economies of the MENA region vary significantly, from GDP per capita levels of around US$1,500 per annum to more than US$60,000 per annum. The economies are undergoing major economic reform and liberalisation programmes, boosting domestic private investment and foreign direct investment.

Understandably, much of the regionís FDI is focused on the hydrocarbon sector, but over the last few years, there has been a significant diversification of investment to encompass banking and financial services, pharmaceuticals, construction and many joint ventures, increasingly in manufacturing.

North Africa, while some countries have lower hydrocarbon resources than the GCC states, offers an increasingly attractive, low cost manufacturing base for multi-nationals to manufacture goods for the fastgrowing domestic markets, as well as for the regional and international markets.

A number of major manufacturing plants have been announced recently, most notably an Airbus plant in Tunisia and a Nissan car manufacturing plant in Morocco.
Given increasing transportation costs it is anticipated that the cost advantages of North Africa will become increasingly attractive to European investors.

In the background, the general laws and regulations governing private and foreign investment have been much improved over the past few years with several
countries, Egypt notably, being consistently in the top countries globally in the World Bank’s annual Doing Business survey.

The region’s consumer market has been transformed in only a few years, with Arab consumers helping to push internal demand for the first time in size, providing an
element to economic growth that had not been present historically.