Riyadh : Gulf Arab countries will abolish a five per cent import duty within one to two months to ease a supply strain that has been mostly felt in Saudi Arabia, an official said yesterday.
Finance ministers from the six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) were to examine the proposed measure at a meeting later yesterday.
"There is consensus among GCC countries about this proposal.
"It will be approved without any problem but it will probably take a month or two for it to be implemented," an official from the GCC Secretariat told Reuters before the start of the meeting.
Outside the bloc
Saudi Arabia and five other Gulf Arab countries including Qatar, the UAE and Kuwait have formed the GCC customs union which imposes a common external tariff for products imported from outside the GCC.
After a relative lull, steel demand began soaring in the second half of 2009 in Saudi Arabia, fuelled mainly by massive state spending by the world's top oil exporter on infrastructure to diversify the economy and counter the effects of the global economic downturn.
The GCC finance ministers are also discussing proposals from Qatar to set up a regional bank for international aid and a Bahraini proposal to set up a stabilisation fund to aid troubled GCC economies should the need arise.
The meeting will set the agenda for an upcoming GCC summit due to be held in Riyadh this week.
