Governmental sources doubted Kuwait’s ability to achieve a rapid shift in modifying the demographics stating that “change is an impossible and needs a comprehensive study for a change in social concepts and reducing the dependence on others as it needs to activate series of decisions by increasing fees on expatriates and other legislative amendments.”, reported Al Rai daily.
A proposal was submitted that aims to reduce the number of expats to approximately 70% relative to Kuwaitis by 2030, provided that the share of each nationality does not exceed a maximum of 20% of the total number of citizens. The surprise was the high growth of expats in the country by an increase of 1% after a year when a number of ministries adopted the proposal to decrease the expats.
The proposal also aimed to limit expat stay in the country between 10 – 15 years maximum, which has to be implemented in co-ordination from the high-level and several parties in the country, but no progress was achieved in this regard.
The rise of domestic and registered labor in the agricultural sector which is considered one of the causes of the coronavirus crisis. More than one million workers are registered in these sectors, which is about 60% of the Kuwaiti population, as well as other sectors, hence it is not that easy to start replacing workers in.
In a related context, statistics showed that the employment of expats increased by 1 percent (from about 74.5% at the end of 2018 to about 75.5% in 2019). The growth rates of the expat population increased in 2019 from the number in 2018, with an increase rate of 125800 people, showing a growth rate of approximately 3.9%, an increase from the growth rate in 2018 of about 2.8%, and their number amounted to 3.344 million people.
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