Kuwait is a member of both the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and the GCC. Additionally, the country is arguably the most politically dynamic in the Gulf, which has afforded it strong foundations to help tackle recent issues concerning parliamentary elections and accountability. By continuing with economic diversification...
Driven by rising demand for new sources of financing in the face of weak oil prices, Kuwait’s Islamic financial services (IFS) sector is increasingly considered to be a core component of the nation’s development. The industry’s steadily improving profile is largely a result of the government’s efforts to shore up the sector’s reputation over the...
Over the course of the past decade the Central Bank of Kuwait (CBK), the Ministry of Finance and the Capital Markets Authority have focused on strengthening Kuwait’s financial sector. The nation’s banks have been key beneficiaries of this effort. At the end of 2015 Kuwait was home to 23 banks in total, including 11 domestic players and 12...
Since Saudi Arabia began reducing its domestic wheat production in 2008, the issue of food security has been high on the agenda for GCC governments. The Kingdom, which was once self-sufficient in the grain and even exported to the wider region, recognised something that is true across the whole of the Arabian Peninsula: it is quickly running...
With strong foreign reserves, a rapidly improving investment framework and a major state-led development programme under way, Kuwait is well positioned to attract growing levels of foreign direct investment (FDI) and trade in the coming years. While the government has cut back on current spending recently, capital expenditure has continued...
In January 2016 Kuwait announced plans to create a new fund to manage its domestic assets, signalling a key step forward in the push to privatise state-owned assets. While the state has experimented with privatisation in the past, the climate of significantly reduced oil prices, which reached a 12-year low in January 2016, has added a greater...
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