The regularity with which the Kuwaiti government has issued bonds over the past decade has driven aggregate bond growth – sovereign and corporate – and helped to establish the country as a leading issuer of bonds’ sharia-compliant equivalents, sukuks. While the global economic crisis has seen a dropoff in bond and sukuk issues across the...
The Kuwait Health Assurance Company (KHAC), a public-private partnership, is set to transform the health care system and create business opportunities for investors. The KHAC was established in 2010 under Ministerial Resolution 586, and the people of Kuwait, the government and a strategic private investor will hold stakes of 50%, 24% and 26%...
Strong competition in the local market from both takaful and conventional players has made recent years challenging for Kuwait’s sharia-compliant insurers. The performance of dedicated takaful providers in 2010 was mixed, with gains by players such as National Takaful and Ain Takaful (which grew their premiums by 17.4% and 58.7%, respectively)...
Nearly two-thirds of the investment spending identified in the country’s five-year development plan, some KD20bn ($72.1bn), has been earmarked for the oil sector. The expenditure of these funds is largely geared towards expanding production capacity from around 3.15m barrels per day (bpd) to 3.5m bpd by 2015 and 4m bpd by 2020. This investment could...
The insurance industry is going through a transition in the post-slowdown environment. In a business climate where investment returns are less favourable and more difficult to predict, there is a renewed focus on the fundamentals. “The market is still evolving to address economic realities that emerged after the global financial crisis,” Oommen John...
While business activities undertaken according to the principles of Islamic law, or sharia, have been a feature of the Gulf region for over a millennium, recent years have seen the emergence of a modern Islamic financial services (IFS) sector that has established itself as an important component of regional economies. Kuwait is no exception. Its...
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