The sharp drop in the price of oil, the lifeblood of Gulf economies, is an opportunity to end subsidies and introduce reforms in the energy-rich region, ministers said yesterday.
“With low prices... it is the right time” to cut subsidies on oil products, Kuwait’s Finance Minister Anas al-Saleh said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
In a panel on the future of economic reform in the Arab world, Saleh - also Kuwait’s acting oil minister - said that record low oil prices would make the lifting of subsidies on fuel products easier on consumers.  
“We saw an opportunity to have people do the right thing, which is to pay the right cost of energy,” said Emirati Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazrouei.
“We need to rethink about major reforms that make our budgets independent from oil revenues,” he added.
After liberalising fuel prices in June, Mazrouei said the UAE is looking into lifting subsidies on other products and services, including on electricity.
“That’s not healthy,” he said, speaking of gas sold to electricity providers at subsidised rates, stressing the need to “apply international prices”.
The head of Bahrain’s Economic Development Board, Khalid al-Rumaihi, went further, describing the sharp drop in oil revenues as a “blessing in disguise,” because it provides an “opportunity for reforms”.