Collective Budget Deficit

OPEC member countries last year registered their first collective budget deficit since 1998, the group said this week, the result of an oil price slump that dropped government petroleum-export revenue to a 10-year low. In its annual statistical report, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries illustrated how an oil rout that has cut prices in half since 2014 has weighed on the economies of crude-dependent states, Market Watch reported. OPEC members ran a combined deficit of $99.6 billion in 2015, compared with a surplus of $238.1 billion in 2014. The last time OPEC ran a collective deficit in 1998, a financial crisis slammed Asia's economy and competition by Iran and Saudi Arabia for market share drove OPEC's oil prices down to about $10 a barrel. Prices recovered over the ensuing decade. After a sharp but brief decline following the 2008 financial crisis, oil hit $115 barrel by mid-2014.