As the United States-Israeli war with Iran sends tremors through the global economy, the poorest members of the Global South are the most exposed to the fallout.
In Asia, Africa and the Middle East, developing economies are bearing the brunt of surging energy costs prompted by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on oil and gas facilities across the Gulf.
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From Pakistan to Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, through to Jordan, Egypt and Ethiopia, policymakers are facing the double whammy of being both heavily dependent on imported energy and having limited financial firepower to absorb the shock of spiking prices.
In Pakistan, which imports about 80 percent of its energy from the Gulf and has lurched between economic crises for years, authorities have scrambled to roll out measures to conserve fuel.
Facing the depletion of the country’s petrol and diesel reserves within weeks, officials have closed schools, introduced a four-day working week for government offices, ordered half of the country’s public sector employees to work from home, and slashed fuel allowances for official business.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said last week that he had decided against a proposed hike in petrol and diesel prices before the Eid Al-Fitr celebration, saying the government would “bear the burden” of rising costs.
Sharif’s announcement came after the government had earlier this month approved a 55 rupee ($0.20) rise in the price of a litre (0.26 gallons) of petrol or diesel.
While government subsidies have helped cushion the blow for the public, there are fears that petroleum prices will surge and bring economic activity to a halt if the war drags on, said S Akbar Zaidi, the executive director of the Institute of Business Administration in Karachi.
“The overall shock is quite severe, although it has not been fully passed on to consumers and to industry,” Zaidi said.
“I expect the next few weeks to make things far worse once the disruption and price factors pass through.”
In Bangladesh, which imports about 95 percent of its oil and is expected to run through its fuel reserves within days, petrol pumps in some districts have run dry despite the introduction of fuel rationing.
Sri Lanka, which imports about 60 percent of its energy needs and is still reeling from an economic meltdown that began in 2019, has declared every Wednesday a public holiday and introduced a mandatory fuel pass for vehicle owners to conserve petrol and diesel, stockpiles of which are projected to run dry within weeks.
In Egypt, one of the biggest energy importers and among the most indebted economies in the Middle East, the government has ordered malls, shops and cafes to close by 9pm on weekdays and 10pm during weekends, and cut back on public lighting.
Facing growing pressure on public finances due to the government’s heavy subsidisation of fuel prices, Egyptian officials on March 10 announced price hikes of between 15 and 22 percent for petrol, diesel and cooking gas.
While acknowledging the burden on the public, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said the move was necessary to avoid “harsher and more dangerous outcomes”.
“For a majority of developing economies, especially those already grappling with debt and high import dependence, they are facing a potent mix of inflation, currency pressures and fiscal strains,” said Yeah Kim Leng, a professor of economics at the Jeffrey Cheah Institute on Southeast Asia at Sunway University in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
“The hardest hit are net energy and food importers, especially those with fragile macroeconomic foundations and pre-existing vulnerabilities that typified countries with low per capita income and high poverty rates,” Yeah added.
Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Jordan, Senegal, Egypt, Angola, Ethiopia and Zambia are among the most at risk, according to a recent analysis by the Washington-based Centre for Global Development, which looked at factors including dependence on fuel imports, public debt levels and foreign exchange reserve/import ratios.
Currency depreciation
The weakening of many developing countries’ currencies against the US dollar – the result of investors buying the greenback amid heightened geopolitical uncertainty – has compounded the situation by further driving up costs.
“Countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines have already seen their currencies at near record lows even before the start of the conflict, making imports, including oil, much more expensive,” said Azizul Amiludin, a non-resident senior fellow at the Malaysia Institute of Economic Research in Kuala Lumpur.
Much as the fallout of the war poses particular challenges for governments in developing countries, the effect on citizens is disproportionate, too.
In less advanced economies, citizens spend much more of their pay cheques on fuel and food, leaving them more exposed to rising living costs.
At the same time, governments in developing countries have less capacity to provide a safety net for those at risk of falling through the cracks.
“In vulnerable economies, governments often attempt to shield their populations from price hikes by subsidising fuel and food,” said Yeah, the Jeffrey Cheah Institute professor.
“However, with depleted fiscal buffers and shrinking revenues, this becomes unsustainable. The ensuing austerity, combined with hyperinflation, can trigger widespread social unrest and a full-blown fiscal crisis.”
With the US and Israel barely a month into their war and no clear timetable for its end in sight, many analysts expect things to get worse before they get better.
Khalid Waleed, a research fellow at the Sustainable Development Policy Institute in Islamabad, said rising transport costs would soon be felt at supermarket checkouts.
“Diesel is the backbone of Pakistan’s freight and agricultural economy,” Waleed said.
“Trucking costs have started climbing, and that will feed into everything from flour to fertiliser in the weeks ahead.”
Once Pakistan’s wheat harvest gets under way in April, food prices could spike well beyond their current levels, Waleed said.
“Combine harvesters, threshers, tractors for haulage from field to market, and the trucks that move grain from fields to flour mills and storage facilities all run on high-speed diesel,” he said.
“For a country where wheat flour is the single largest item in the food basket of the bottom two income quintiles, this is not a marginal concern,” Waleed added.
“If diesel prices stay elevated through April and May, Pakistan will harvest its wheat at the most expensive input cost in years, and that cost will transmit directly into food inflation at a time when households have almost no capacity left to absorb further price shocks.”
