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Falling oil prices signals budget crisis (27 December 2014)
Gaza City - Prime Minister John Semler addressed the National Assembly today on the effects that falling global oil prices will have on the Gazan government's budget. In a statement to the Assembly, urging for immediate government action, Semler claimed that a global drop in petroleum prices would "devastate the ability of Gaza's government to function normally." The remarks come based upon reports that the drop of petroleum prices worldwide would continue into 2015, which for Semler means that the budget and its reliance on petroleum prices could play a major role in the elections to be held next year.

Leader of the opposition Ella Kerkenbaum, head of the Red Rose Party, believed that "the government's inability to respond with diligence and efficiency to the global drop in prices per barrel of oil" and the Gazan "reliance upon foreign purchase of Gazan petroleum exports" would assure "victory for [her] coalition in the elections of next year." Kerkenbaum is a vocal opponent of the Bohemian government's continuation of use of petroleum profits to fund government programmes, and that the most effective means of creating a stable and operable service system was through public support by way of more appropriate taxation and the creation of a higher tariff for Gazan exports to foreign countries.

Members of the public, in line with Kerkenbaum's beliefs, have expressed concern over the ability of the government to function as a truly sovereign state in the face of these falling prices. Local businesswoman Anna Redket believes that the current government "doesn't really realise that we can't keep selling petroleum to keep our country running" and that the nation's continued use of petroleum reserves would "surely mean that at some point [Gaza] won't have any money left to spend, because [the government] will have dug all of the money it could from the ground."

For now, the surplus in the national reserve is enough to let the government spend for around five to six years without actually making any money, because of decades of accumulation of gold reserves through the highly lucrative sale of petroleum throughout the existence of the Gazan nation state. While Gaza may not exactly be able to call itself a financially solvent nation in the near future, for now, the price of oil could mean that the situation will go either way. Most analysts believe that low petroleum prices cannot persist for more than the amount of time that the government has before it begins to spend money it does not have, but uncertainty still remains.