Having 10 local banks and 11 branches of foreign operators serving a population of around 3m might appear to make for a fragmented market, but the distribution of assets is concentrated in a relatively small number of institutions. At the beginning of 2011 the nation’s two leading banks accounted for about 55.7% of the sector’s total asset base of...
The Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA), the manager of the country’s sovereign wealth fund, is playing an increasingly active role in the domestic and international economy. This bodes well for the country’s growth prospects, and for a future in which national income no longer depends on the global price of oil.
Buoyed by surging oil revenues, strong public finances, and a young and growing population, Kuwait is now moving toward a period of renewed growth after making a strong rebound from the global economic crisis. In 2011 the country’s GDP rose by an estimated 5.7%. According to projections from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Kuwait will record...
The political landscape in Kuwait has been marked by deadlock and legislative inertia for several years. However, the repercussions of the global financial crisis in the emirate have offered the prospect of a shake-up. The government has been able to take the first steps towards greater economic liberalisation and to call on the parliament to pass...
Like many other GCC states, Kuwait has experienced rising inflation over the past two years as the country has recovered from the global economic crisis, and as oil, food and commodity prices have risen worldwide. Nevertheless, inflation is not expected to reach pre-crisis highs in the near term, and the government has maintained an accommodative...
Recent years have not only brought a new verve to investment and development within Kuwait, but have also seen its foreign policy liberated to some extent. For more than a decade, and arguably up until 2008, the emirate at the head of the Arabian Gulf formulated its international relations based on the uneasy legacy of the 1990 invasion by Iraq....
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