The shock from the Mideast war is large, and it is spreading well beyond the battlefield. Kristalina Georgieva told Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation on April 12, 2026, that 13% of the oil and 20% of the gas that would have flowed in the world are now stuck for five weeks and counting.
“It is global,” the International Monetary Fund managing director said, adding that “it is asymmetric” because some countries are taking a far harder hit than others. Georgieva said nations near the conflict are being struck hard, as are oil importers and countries without reserves to cushion the blow. The IMF, she said, is running scenarios based on how long the war lasts, while hoping for peace that would improve conditions for everyone.
Georgieva said the damage is already showing up in places far from the Middle East. People in the Philippines, she said, are queueing to fill their tanks the way Americans did in the 1970s. She also pointed to helium used in semiconductors and MRIs, saying it comes out of Qatar and is now “cut to size.”
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The pressure is not limited to fuel. Georgieva said the planting season is underway, and countries that cannot get fertilizers at a reasonable price may face a spike in food prices. She said remittances are being squeezed because workers in the Gulf are sending less money home to places like India and Bangladesh. Sri Lanka, she added, is especially exposed because a third of flights to the country go through the Gulf, and tourism there is going to be hammered.
That is why the IMF is preparing to focus on highly vulnerable countries, especially poor nations in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Georgieva said those countries are being hammered dramatically, and that a lot of infrastructure has been damaged already, meaning it will take time to bring operations back to full strength. The deeper the war drags on, the more the shock reaches into energy, food, transport and travel — and the harder it becomes for the weakest economies to absorb it.
