Over the past two decades, Kuwait welcomed American mall culture, embracing it as a confluence of retail and leisure, yet the country has been slower to take on modern super- and hypermarkets. This is now changing, and Kuwait is seeing the rapid rise of hypermarket retail, representing the sector’s most dynamic vector.
As only Islamic lenders are permitted to offer home financing packages, Kuwait’s mortgage market differs significantly from others in the region. Unsurprisingly, this is a state of affairs that conventional banks would like to see changed. “Mortgage loans are a big problem here in Kuwait,” Aly Mahmoud Shalaby, the head of consumer banking at Gulf...
The IT sector has gained much ground over the last decade, witnessing a dramatic rise in internet penetration – from a negligible rate in the year 2000 to levels of access comparable to Europe by 2013. Substantial government investment in e-services and infrastructure have boosted the nation’s network readiness and gone some way towards mitigating...
Two of Kuwait’s largest developments are being built on islands – one with a history of habitation that stretched back to 2000 BC and the other on a challenging landscape that has long been viewed as unsuitable for settlement. While both are significant in scale, the approach of the government to the development of each is quite distinct.
While Kuwait’s economy showed a high degree of resilience in the face of the global economic crisis, its real estate sector – particularly the more vulnerable commercial segment – did not escape unscathed. However, the market by 2012 proved itself to be in the early stages of a sustained recovery, while legislation has helped the sector regain much...
The headline statistic of the World Economic Forum’s (WEF’s) annual “Global Information Technology Report” for 2012 brought good news for Kuwait: the country jumped 13 places above its 2011 position to reach a ranking of 62nd out of 144 on the IT Networked Readiness Index, which assesses economies on their IT usage, acceptance and efficiency. The...
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