Originally posted by: Aimster
Originally posted by: DeeKnow
Originally posted by: Aimster
Who said oil has to be all their income? In most countries oil is only 10-20% of their GDP.
Aimster.... it does you no good to advertise your ignorance like this... 10-20% of GDP???
Iran, Saudi, Abu Dhabi, Libya, Algeria,.... and a whole bunch of others depend on oil for over 75% of their GDP. Yes that's
75%, not
7.5%
You say your parents are Iranian...? I think you should spend a little time reading up on the country and the region.....
I think you should stop pulling numbers out of your ass. 75%? I love how that number was pulled from your ass when 40% of Iran's GDP is from the black market. Iran is the number #1 producer of steel in the region and they are on track to sell 500,000 cars a year. They also sell half a billion dollars worth of military equipment. Not to mention their strong agriculture sector which is decling but is still steady at 30-35%. The service section which is not all oil accounts for 50% of Iran's GDP.
The governments get most of the money from oil. They own the oil unlike the rest of the world. Does that mean their GDP = 75% oil. I think not.
Oil Revenue for Iran in 1996 was 18 billion. So are you suggesting that 18 billion is 75% of Iran's GDP in 1996?
Another lost soul who doesn't know the region. Telling me to look up my facts, yeah ok.
fair enough... i got my numbers mixed up. my apologies on that one.
I recently read about their exports and government receipts (revenues) and mistakenly quoted that number as their GDP... I was wrong.
however, my claim still stands... most of the middle east has nothing but oil to keep it going...
here (this time i better make sure i get the numbers right) is some statistics for you
from the
EIA web site
"...With oil export revenues making up around 90-95% of total Saudi export earnings, 70%-80% of state revenues, and around 40% of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), Saudi Arabia's economy remains, despite attempts at diversification, heavily dependent on oil (although investments in petrochemicals have increased the relative importance of the downstream petroleum sector in recent years)...."
what does that tell you? you think Saudis will be able to afford toilet paper if the oil ran out ??
As for Iran, I will have to do some more research but I am disinclined to believe your numbers for numerous reasons...
a) The Iranian government has never been forthright about anything, much less things like GDP and revenues
b) as you point out, a huge portion of the economy is in the undeclared, 'parallel' economy. since we don't know what that is, it is pointless to argue over how much of that is oil related.
c) Iranian GDP numbers are always suspect because of how the govt does exchange rate conversions. last time i checked, they were still using 70 rials = 1 USD for certain calculations... while in the real world, you were hard pressed to buy a roll of toilet paper with 70 rials. so when you claim 50% of the GDP comes from services, can you tell me what exchange rate was used to impute a value on those services?
On a quick and dirty basis.... here's how it looks specifically for Iran... (numbers from the same EIA web site as above)
GDP = $ 126 billion
daily oil production (average for first 6 months of 2004) = 4.1 million bbls
4.1 million barrels x 365 days x $40 = approximately 60 billion
that does not, by the way, include any gas, downstream (petrochemicals, refining etc) or even the black economy that is related to oil. that also does not include all the services that are dependent on the oil (how many employyes does NOIC have???)
to my ignorant self, that sounds like close to 50% of GDP ...... ?