Drivers push their tuk tuk vehicles to refuel with liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) at a fuel station in Phnom Penh on March 26, 2026. A major energy supplier in Cambodia has said it will halt sales of liquefied petroleum gas from the start of next month due to supply disruptions resulting from the Middle East war.
Image: Photo by TANG CHHIN SOTHY / AFP
Here are the latest economic events in the Middle East war:
The global trading system is experiencing the "worst disruptions in the past 80 years", World Trade Organization chief Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala warned Thursday at the opening of the WTO ministerial conference.
"The world order and the multilateral system we use to know has irrevocably changed," she said, adding: "We cannot deny the scale of the problems confronting the world today."
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development cut its eurozone growth outlook and forecast higher inflation for 2026 after the Middle East war caused energy prices to skyrocket.
The Paris-based group lowered its growth forecast for the currency union by 0.4 percentage points to 0.8 percent. It largely maintained its 2026 forecasts for the United States and China, but warned of further fall out should hostilities continue.
Oil prices rose and equities fell Thursday as confidence in a quick end to the Middle East war waned.
Brent was up more than three percent to trade at $105.69 a barrel at 0845 GMT. West Texas Intermediate rose around three percent to $93.03 a barrel.
After gains on Wall Street and Europe Wednesday, shares fell in Asia while the main European markets indexes were all down around one percent.
South Korea will roll out a $17 billion "wartime" supplementary budget and expand fuel tax cuts as the war in Iran pushes up energy prices, the government said Thursday.
"The government will draw up a supplementary budget worth 25 trillion won next month -- funded by excess tax revenue -- in response to the prolonged Middle East conflict," the government said in a statement.
Japan said it had started to release another part of its strategic oil reserves Thursday as it looks to temper the impact on the resource-poor nation from the surge in prices caused by the war.
Japan is the fifth-biggest importer of oil, with more than 90 percent of it from the Middle East.
Hong Kong aviation giant Cathay Pacific announced Thursday it was raising fuel surcharges on all flights by 34 percent as a result of increasing oil costs due to the Middle East war. The hike in fees will apply to tickets from April 1, the statement added.
France, which holds the G7 Presidency, on Monday will host a meeting bringing together the group's finance ministers, energy ministers and central bank governors, Finance Minister Roland Lescure told RTL radio on Thursday.
The meeting, to be held via video call, will address what Lescure described as a "convergence of energy issues, economic issues and inflation issues".
German consumer sentiment fell heading into April due to the Middle East war, a survey showed Thursday, adding to the woes facing Europe's top economy.
The forward-looking indicator, published by pollsters GfK and the Nuremberg Institute for Market Decisions (NIM), fell 3.2 points to minus 28.
"Consumers are expecting inflation to take off again and the economic recovery to be held back as a result of higher energy prices," Rolf Buerkl, head of consumer climate at NIM, said.
A ship carrying more than 700,000 barrels of Russian crude oil has arrived in the Philippines, a source told AFP Thursday, days after the Southeast Asian country declared a national energy emergency over the Middle East war.
The Sierra Leone-flagged Sara Sky, bearing crude from Russia's ESPO pipeline arrived on Monday, with documents showing the consignee as Petron Corp, operator of the Philippines' sole oil refinery, said the source.
The Philippines is heavily dependent on imported fuel, the cost of which has hit historic highs since the war forced the partial closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Taiwan has been targeted by a wave of online disinformation claiming the island's gas supplies will soon be completely depleted due to disruptions from the Middle East war -- a false narrative officials say could cause panic and undermine confidence in the government.
The false social media posts include a persistent claim that Taiwan will run out of liquefied natural gas (LNG) within 11 days and face electricity blackouts due to Iran's restrictions on tankers passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
Taiwanese authorities say there are sufficient LNG reserves for March and April.
AFP