Construction & Real Estate

With the country beginning to clear a backlog of major projects in energy, infrastructure and housing, the construction sector in Kuwait has seen a resurgence of activity in recent years. The government’s five-year National Development Plan committed to spend KD34bn ($112.5bn) over the 2015-20 period, and KD12bn ($39.7bn) worth of projects were signed off in the plan’s preliminary year. The country has seen its first successful construction project completed on a public-private partnership (PPP) basis, and according to National Bank of Kuwait, there is a further KD10bn ($33.1bn) in PPP projects in the pipeline for schemes ranging from power and water to education, health and transport. Real Estate meanwhile accounts for 6% of Kuwait’s non-oil GDP with the impressive scale of real estate activity apparent from satellite images showing a new city in the country’s south being reclaimed from the sea over the course of 15 years. Several new communities being built by the government to provide homes for more than 100,000 Kuwaiti married couples, will provide ample new opportunities to develop residential, retail and commercial property in the years ahead.

This chapter contains interviews with Khaled Al Mashaan, Vice-Chairman and CEO, ALARGAN and Yasser Hassan Abul, Minister of State for Housing Affairs.