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Kuwait City: Kuwait has awarded projects worth a record $30 billion so far this year despite the sharp fall in oil income, officials and experts said yesterday.
“Up until mid-October, Kuwait has awarded record projects worth $30bn up around $6bn on the whole of last year,” Edward James, director of analysis at Middle East Economic Digest (MEED) Projects told a conference on Kuwaiti
projects.
He said Kuwait was the only country in GCC to exceed MEED forecasts in awarding projects this year.
Projects in Saudi Arabia and UAE, which are the leading regional nations in projects, saw their project awarding process cut by half,
James said.
In Saudi Arabia, the value of awarded projects dived to around $33bn and in UAE it slid to under $20bn, officials said.
MEED said Kuwait, which gave contracts worth $24bn in 2014, has projects worth more than $251bn planned or
underway.
Of those, $137bn worth are in the pre-execution stage and around $85bn of them are under study,
MEED said.
Key sectors include construction at $90bn, oil and gas ($69bn), transport ($49bn) and power ($26bn).
In February, parliament approved a five-year development plan that envisages spending 34bn dinars ($112bn) between the current 2015/2016 fiscal year
and 2019/2020.
Talal Al Shemmari, a senior official at the Supreme Planning Council, told the conference that projects planned over the next five years include a metro system at $18.5bn, a railway project as part of the GCC railway link at $6.6bn and a power plant
at $8bn.
Under the plan, power generation will be doubled to just under 30,000 megawatts and a 25-km causeway linking Kuwait City with the country’s north is already
underway.
Last month, Kuwait awarded contracts worth $13bn to foreign firms to build a 615,000-barrel per day
refinery.
Prime Minister Shaikh Jaber Al Mubarak Al Hamad Al Sabah reiterated yesterday that the drop in oil revenues will not impact development
projects.
Like other GCC peers, Kuwait’s economy heavily relies on oil which contributes 94 per cent of public
revenues.
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