Unemployment, Inflation, GDP, And Ecommerce Market In Maldives, Ghana, And Saudi Arabia

Unemployment Rates in Maldives, Ghana, and Saudi Arabia

The above table shows the rate of unemployment for three countries which are Maldives, Ghana and Saudi Arabia. The chart collected from the google public data shows the rate of unemployment for these three countries. Ghana, which is located along the Gulf of Atlantic and Guinea ocean is the subregion of west Africa. The rate of unemployment of Ghana for the five year span have been collected in put into the tabular form. It has been found out that the rate of unemployment was 2.36 percent in the year 2017. During the year 2013, the rate of unemployment in Ghana was 2.17 percent and then declined in the next year where the rate was 2.16 percent.  After declining in 2015 as well where the rate was 2.15 percent, the unemployment rate increased from 2.15 percent in 2015 to 2.26 percent and then it increased again in 2017 at 2.36 percent. So basically, it can be said that the rate of unemployment was not too high and had been around 2 to 3 percent for the past five years.

Maldives is an Asian country which is located in the Indian ocean which is situated in Arabian ocean and lies southwest of sir lank. The above table shows the rate of unemployment of Maldives and the chart above the table shows the rate of unemployment. The data collected shows that the rate of unemployment is quite high in Maldives when compared to Ghana where it was around two to three percent. In case of Maldives, the rate of unemployment was 4.97 percent in the year 2013 and then it increased to 5.21 percent in the year 2014. After that the rate of unemployment have decreased to 5 percent in 2015 and then it declined again to 5.03 percent in the year 2016 (Google.com. 2019). The rate of unemployment in Maldives have been 4.99 percent in the year 2017. Therefore, the highest rate of unemployment from 2013 to 2017 in Maldives have been in 2014 where the rate was 5.21 percent.

The third country which have been taken into account for collecting the data of rate of unemployment is Saudi Arabia. This is a desert country which encompasses most of the Arabian Peninsula with Red Sea and Persian Gulf Coastlines and is also known as the birthplace of Islam. The table above shows that the unemployment rate of Saudi Arabia in the year 2013 have been around 5.59 [percent which was quite high and the highest between the three countries mentioned. The rate of unemployment in case of Saudi Arabia is quite high in nature. The rate of unemployment however increased in the year 2014 to 5.72 percent. In the year 2015, the rate of unemployment went back to 5.59 percent again. However, in the year 2016, the rate of unemployment has increased to 5.86 percent and then it again increased to 5.72 percent therefore, it can be said that the rate of unemployment has been highest for Saudi Arabia in the year 2016 since the rate was 5.86 percent (Google.com. 2019).

Countries	2013 Save Time On Research and Writing Hire a Pro to Write You a 100% Plagiarism-Free Paper. Get My Paper	2014	2015	2016	2017
Ghana	11.61%	15.49%	17.15%	17.47%	12.37%
Maldives	3.81%	2.12%	0.95%	0.50%	2.30%
Saudi Arabia	3.51%	2.67%	2.18%	3.52%	-0.83%

Inflation Rates in Maldives, Ghana, and Saudi Arabia

The above chart shows the data for inflation of three countries which are Maldives, Ghana and Saudi Arabia and it has been taken from the official of google public data. The table above shows that the rate of inflation from the year 2013 to 2017. The first country which have been stated in the table is Ghana whose inflation rate was very high in the year of 2013 which was 11.61 percent. The rate however did not reduce after that year and it kept on increasing and in 2014 the rate was 15,49 percent. The rate of inflation in Ghana is quite high in nature and it again increase in 2015 where the rate was 17.15 percent (Google.com. 2019).  After that it again rose to 17.47 percent which was the highest in the five year span. However, the rate of inflation reduced in 2017 to 12.37 percent. Therefore, it can be said that the rate of inflation had been very high in Ghana for the last five years where the ideal rate should be around 2 percent.

In case of Maldives, the inflation rate had not been so severe as in the case of Ghana. The rate of inflation in case of Maldives have been 3.51 percent in the year 2013 and then it decreased to 2.12 percent. The rate of inflation however again decreased to 0.95 percent in the year 2015. After that it decreased further to 0.50 percent in 2016 and then it rose a little in 2017 to 2.30 percent. Therefore, it can be concluded by saying that the rate of inflation in Maldives had been quite low from 2013 to 2017.

The third country whose inflation rate have been projected in the table is Saudi Arabia. It states that the rate of inflation in 2013 was 3.51 percent. in the year 2014, the rate of inflation in case of Saudi Arabia have reduced a little to 2.67 percent (Google.com. 2019). The rate however decreased again in 2015 to 2.18 percent. in the year 2016, the rate of inflation rose a lot to 3.52 percent however, the rate of inflation reduced sharply to -0.83 percent in the year 2017. The inflation rate is 2017 is the least of all the years from 2013 to 2017.

Countries	2013	2014	2015	2016	2017
Ghana	7.31%	3.99%	3.84%	3.72%	8.51%
Maldives	7.28%	7.33%	2.25%	6.16%	8.83%
Saudi Arabia	2.70%	3.65%	4.11%	1.67%	-0.74%

The above table and the chart show the growth rate of the gross domestic product from the year 2013 to 2017. The data have been collected from the google public data for the three countries. It shows that in case of Ghana the growth of gross domestic product in 2013 have been 7.31 percent which was quite good, however, the rate decreased to 3.99 percent. In the year 2015, the growth rate of gross domestic product decreased slightly to 3.84 percent and in 2016 it was 3.72 percent (Google.com. 2019).  However, the growth rate of GDP has increased sharply to 8.51 percent in 2017. Therefore, it can be said in the 2017, Ghana have experienced the highest rate of inflation in the year 2017 where it was 8.51 percent.

GDP Growth Rates in Maldives, Ghana, and Saudi Arabia

In case of Maldives, the growth rate of GDP has been 7.28 percent and then it increased in the year 2014 to 7.33 percent. However, the rate has decreased in the year 2015 to 2.25 percent in the 2016, the growth rate of gross domestic product increased sharply to 6.16 percent. The growth of GDP again increased sharply in the year 2017 to 8.83 percent.

In case of Saudi Arabia, the growth rate of GDP had been the lowest out of the three mentioned countries where, in the year 2013 the rate was 2.7 percent and then it increased to 3.65 percent in the year 2014. The rate of GDP also increased to 4.11 percent in the year 2015. However, the rate decreased sharply to 1.67 percent in the year 2016 (Google.com. 2019). The rate had been lowest in the year 2017 which was -0.74 percent. Therefore, the year 2017 Saudi Arabia did not experience any kind of positive growth of gross domestic product.

Table 3: Exchange rate

Countries	2013
Ghana	1.95405
Maldives	15.36671
Saudi Arabia	3.75

The exchange rate which have been taken from the website of world bank shows only the value of exchange rate in 2013 have been shown (Data.worldbank.org. 2019). Therefore, it can be said that the exchange rate of Ghana in 2013 was 1.9. On the other hand, the exchange rate of Maldives in 2013 was 15.366 and that of Saudi Arabia was 3.75.

E-commerce is the activity of buying as well as selling of products over the internet. Electronic commerce also known as E-commerce deals buying or selling the commodities on technologies such as electronic funds transfer, online transactions, mobile commerce, inventory, management systems along with the automated data collection systems (Alturaigi and Altameem 2016). Some of the common applications which are related to electronic commerce are conversational commerce, digital wallet, electronic tickets, online banking, document automation, social networking, virtual assistant and domestic and international payment systems.

The e-commerce market of Saudi Arabia has known to grow from $7.9 billion in the year 2017. According to the annual report of The Saudi Communications and Information Technology Commission’s, it has been found out that the growth of the E-commerce in the United Kingdom reached around SAR29.7 billion in the previous year.  The report has also showed that more than 8 million our chases took place through electronic applications and websites of Saudi Arabia. The ecommerce usually faces a number of challenges for growth. It has been found out that the consumers of Saudi Arabia mostly favor cash payments on delivery rather than the payments made on credit card payments at the point of sale on the internet. Almost more than half of the internet user of Saudi Arabia reported of purchasing services and products online and through their mobile handsets (Alharbi Atkins. and Stanier 2015). The government of Saudi Arabia known to have passed a number of regulations in order to control and monitor the transactions taken place electronically and combat cybercrime.  The government is also known to have allocated USD 800 million for implementing an e government initiative.

Exchange Rates in Maldives, Ghana, and Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia is globally known to be one of the most important country from a number of perspectives.  It has a strategic impact on the economy of world since it is one of the largest producers of oil in the world.  E commerce also brings convenience for the consumers since they do not need to leave home for shopping. They only need to browse websites online for buying goods. The ecommerce technologies also cut transaction costs by allowing both manufacturers and consumers (Abed,  Dwivedi and Williams 2015). The consumers also gain power through online shopping. They are able to research products and compare price among the retailers. The e commerce startups known to face challenges as well as benefits in the industry. The market reports based on the e commerce industry of Saudi Arabia shows that it is positive in nature both in terms of growth as well as future prospects. This country also ranks highest in the Middle East for Ecommerce market attractiveness for many years.

The report of Saudi communications and Information Technology Commissions states that women use e commerce more than males and there are more than 88 percent of users are Saudis. The usage of internet has also climbed from 64 percent in the year 2014 to more than 80 percent in the end of 2017. The e commerce services in this particular country known to represent around two third of the e commerce spending in the country where the travel related services come first (Alturaigi and Altameem 2016). The report in the year 2016 stated that e commerce of Saudi Arabia has undergone a huge growth. Th e commerce industry have also created job opportunities attracting investment by attracting huge investment, supporting innovation and strengthening domestic industry.

More than 30 million people reside with a total gross domestic product of 600 billion USD. There are also presently more than 10 million users of e commerce in Saudi Arabia where it can reach to 18 million users by 2022 (Makki and Chang 2015). The total e commerce revenue of all products categories is around 6 billion USA abs is expected to grow to 9 billion USD by the year 20121. Fashion is presently the leading product category in Saudi Arabia which also accounts for 1.91 billion USD market share. Fashion followed by electronics and media which is known to generate 2 billion USD in sales.

Rise in the internet penetration: the global internet penetration has largely increased over the years. The advances in the technologies of mobile internet, smartphones and broadbands known to have boosted the uptake of internet based services.  With the present rate of internet users, the global internet users are expected to rise from 3 .2 billion to 3.8 billion by 2020.

Overview of Ecommerce Market in Saudi Arabia

The shift towards the use of mobile devices for the internet known to boosted the growth of online shopping where the total number of internet users in the mobile devices in the world wide is expected to grow from 4.4 billion to 6.7 billion by the year 2020.

Increase in digital payments

The new models and services in the digital payment sector are known to drive the e commerce spending. In most of the country’s financial service companies are known to provide e vouchers, prepaid value cards and rechargeable cards which are linked to the mobile devices in order to curb the cash based payments methods. This have helped the e commerce sales in the country by helping the ecommerce market grow 51 percent in 2016.

Investment by global e commerce players

Some of the global e commerce giants have already known to make huge amount of investments in he emerging economies and these investments have started to fuel the growth of e commerce in these markets. In most of the parts of Asia, Ecommerce giants like amazon and Alibaba have made a lot of investments in emerging economies.

The e commerce ecosystem of Saudi Arabia has evolved in line with the global model.it comprise of demand side buyers as well as supply side providers. Demand side consist of consumer as well as enterprise buyers. On the other hand, the supply side includes pure play e commerce providers, consumer to consumer sellers and traditional retailers.  Presently, the e commerce sector of Saudi Arabia went into a dramatic shift (Makki and Chang 2015). The stakeholders have also become active in the increasing the growth of the e commerce market along with development. The e commerce market is steadily maturing and is marked by new acquisitions along with government efforts. Each of the players in the ecosystem has a vital role to play in the sector of e commerce.

According to the survey by CITC around 60 percent of the Saudi population known to have shopped online at least once in the past. Most of these online shoppers known to have made a transaction in the previous year which shows an increasing shift towards the online shopping (Abed, Dwivedi and Williams 2015). While most of the shoppers known to have purchased from companies located in Saudi Arabia, a huge number of populations made purchases based in other GCC countries and the other regions. This shows that there is a leakage of e commerce revenues to companies outside the country. Shoppers have also known to be using a combination of online and offline channels for their purchases.

The international and the regional ecommerce companies are known to capture a significant portion of the revenues generated in Saudi Arabia.  The lack of a strong diverse domestic e commerce industry stated that shoppers have only limited options to choose what might hamper the growth of the sector. the public investment fund of Saudi Arabia known to own a 50 percent stake of Noon.com which is a billion dollar e commerce industry.

Internet penetration is extremely high in case of Saudi Arabia in those cases when it is compared to other countries in the Middle East and the Gulf Countries.  The internet penetration rate is more than 60 percent and the rate have grown rapidly from 2 percent since 2000.  The quick spread of internet in the past years have been hugely influential for the country where more than 8 million Saudis uses social media. In the year 2016, Saudi Arabia have also received an “Ease of doing business” ranking of 80 by the world bank group.  This particular rank shows that it has declined sharply in the recent years which also states that it is difficult for starting new business here (Sheikh,  Azmathullah and HAQUE 2019).  The difficulty in opening e commerce startups in case of Saudi Arabia is mainly due to lack of any kind of regulations and business frameworks.  Therefore, it also makes it difficult for locating reliable shipping services. Though the citizens have a great interest in e commerce entrepreneurship and opportunity it not easy to open startups without knowledge support from others.

The market reports based on the e commerce in Saudi Arabia shows that it has been positive both in terms of recent growth and future prospects banks are known to offer incentives and special products for consumers who shops online for encouraging the use of cards. Saudi Arabia is also known to ranks highest in terms of market attractiveness in middle east.  The reason behind this is due to high internet penetration, young and rising population and eagerness to utilize mobile phones

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