Gulf budget deficits shrink as rulers spend less

Dubai

SPENDING cuts and an increase in oil prices are helping Gulf Arab monarchies lower some of the world's highest budget deficits, the International Monetary Fund said, hailing it as progress in efforts to transform economies that have relied on hydrocarbons for more than five decades.

Most of the countries in the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council have made "substantial" fiscal adjustment, Jihad Azour, head of the Middle East and Central Asia Department at the IMF, said in an interview in Dubai on Monday.