MEED magazine revealed that contract awards in Kuwait during the past 11 months (January to the end of November 2022) amounted to $1.586 billion, noting that contract awards began to increase steadily, as they amounted during the month of November alone to more than half a billion dollars.
These numbers come in conjunction with the relentless efforts made by Kuwait to accelerate the pace of awarding projects to the private sector during the current fiscal year 2022/2023 in light of its disciplined policy aimed at raising the growth rates of the national economy, as it maintains stable and growing capital expenditure rates despite the policy of controlling spending. And rearranging the priorities of the projects that have followed it over the years, which is evident in the volume of capital expenditures that were estimated in the current fiscal year’s budget, amounting to 2.9 billion dinars, which constitutes about 12% of all Kuwait’s spending during the year 2022/2023.
MEED figures show that the value of contracts awarded in Kuwait amounts to $1.586 billion in 11 months, which is a low rate, if compared with the total awards for 2021, which amounted to $4.9 billion for the whole year, and in 2020 about $4.3 billion, and in 2019 about $2.8 billion. In 2018, it amounted to about $5.8 billion, and in 2017 it amounted to $9.7 billion.
In addition, indicators for follow-up spending on development plan projects during the current fiscal year show that the total estimated spending on development plan projects for the current year amounts to about 1.3 billion dinars, estimated to be spent on 129 projects, 47% of which are in the executive stage, while the indicator of the volume of spending since the beginning of April shows 2022 so far, that government agencies have spent only about 19% of the total appropriations estimated for the current fiscal year, at about 250 million dinars only.
When comparing the volume of contract awards in Kuwait during the period from January to the end of November 2022, it appears that last November witnessed the highest rate of contract awards, with a value of $501 million, constituting about 32% of the total contracts awarded during the period, which was mainly driven by parliamentary – government cooperation that approved the general budgets of government agencies.
MEED magazine had revealed that Kuwait has allocated about $15.6 billion for the implementation of oil and gas projects over the coming years, which are divided into several stages according to the progress that has been achieved, as there are $4.3 billion worth of projects in the implementation phase, and $100 million of projects in the main contract bidding phase.
The magazine added that there are projects worth $680 million in the bid evaluation stage, $950 million in the preliminary planning and design stage, $592 million in the stage of qualifying contractors for the main contract, and finally $8.9 billion of projects in the study stage.
MEED indicated that the value of existing non-oil projects in Kuwait was limited to 409 million dollars, of which projects worth 339 million dollars are in the implementation phase, compared to 70 million dollars for projects in the study phase, and thus it ranked fifth and penultimate on the list of MEED magazine for projects. non-oil in the GCC countries.