Kuwait officially said goodbye to the era of financial deficits yesterday, as it is expected that the fiscal year 2022/2023 will record the first surplus after 8 lean years of continuous deficits.
Statistic prepared by Al-Anba showed the trading prices of Kuwaiti oil, from the first of April 2022 until the end of March 2023, showed that the average price of a Kuwaiti oil barrel for the past fiscal year 2022/2023 amounted to about $98.08, an increase of 22% over the estimated break-even price in the state’s general budget for the year, at about $80.4 a barrel.
This means that Kuwait achieved a surplus of $17.68 (equivalent to about 5.37 dinars) for every barrel of oil sold during the past fiscal year.
The statistics revealed that the lowest daily price of a Kuwaiti oil barrel was recorded during the past fiscal year when it reached the level of $71.72 a barrel on March 20, 2023, while the month of March itself recorded the lowest average price of a barrel of oil during the whole year at $80.04 a barrel.
The statistics showed that the highest price of a barrel of Kuwaiti oil recorded for the fiscal year 2022/2023 was at $124.36 a barrel in trading on May 31, 2022, while the month of May itself recorded the highest monthly average selling price of a barrel of oil at $117.45 a barrel.
In comparison to the estimated budget for the full year, Kuwait was able to achieve an amount of 29.7 billion dinars ($97.7 billion at an exchange rate of 304 fils per dollar and a production volume of 2.73 million barrels per day) oil revenues during the past fiscal year, compared to 21.3 billion dinars estimated oil revenues from fiscal year, with an increase of about 8.4 billion dinars, driven by the improvement in oil prices during the majority of oil trading days last year.
Oil revenue numbers remain likely to increase again, as the numbers of Kuwait’s actual production volume, according to the “OPEC +” alliance agreements, indicate that the volume of Kuwait’s oil revenues was higher for at least 3 months of the current fiscal year by nearly 100,000 barrels per day, reaching levels 2.833 million barrels per day, compared to about 2.73 million estimated in the budget, which constitutes additional oil revenues that support the budget surplus in the state.
In comparison to expenditures, the volume of oil revenues achieved by Kuwait over the past 12 months covers state expenditures and overflows, as the estimated value of expenditures amounts to 23.5 billion dinars, which exceeded oil revenues by 6.2 billion dinars, an increase of about 26.4%.
According to a final calculation, with the deduction of production costs estimated in the draft budget at 3.239 billion dinars from the total surplus estimated according to statistics at 8.4 billion dinars, the state’s general budget is estimated to achieve a net surplus estimated at 5.2 billion dinars if the budget does not include any emergency expenses.
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