ABSTRACT
This chapter examines in detail the general economic framework in the Arab countries with a view to assessing the role of economic integration as an alternative development strategy. It also examines the resource endowment, production structure and foreign trade of the Arab countries, and then assesses the need for development. The plan provided in fact a framework which allows Saudi Arabia to achieve maximum economic growth through utilising the potential gains from trade. The hydrocarbon-based industries which will form the core of the industrial structure of the country are export-orientated industries, given the size of the domestic market and the scale of production of capital-intensive industries. The central theme that could be discerned from the above plans is that the agricultural Arab countries are trying to make the process of development and growth more adapted to their national human and natural resources.
