Kuwait does not welcome immigrants nor does it encourage foreigners to settle here permanently, with the law specifically forbidding non-natives from owning land. The most that outsiders coming to Kuwait can expect is, to stay temporarily, work and then go away. Nevertheless, more than two-thirds of Kuwait’s population is comprised of expatriates, attracted here no doubt by the country’s economic prosperity and work prospects that offer relatively high tax-free salaries.
Obviously, outsiders drawn to Kuwait by its oil wealth are willing to accept the country’s terse ‘stay – work – go’ prescript, and to live by rules and customs that may be quite different to their own native places. But accepting something does not mean foreigners cannot grouse about the conditions under which they have to live and work in Kuwait. Quality of life is also what most expatriates remember when they finally bid adieu to a country. Sadly, when it comes to metrics on the quality of life for foreigners, Kuwait is not anywhere near the top, in fact, it has consistently been at the bottom of the pile in such global rankings.
One of the largest and most comprehensive surveys on expatriate life abroad, which was published recently, had some unflattering takeaways about life for foreigners in Kuwait. In its annual Expat Insider survey for 2018, Inter-nations, the largest global network of expatriates, ranked Kuwait right at the bottom.
Of the 68 countries ranked in 2018 by expatriates living in those places, Kuwait was in the 68th position, with its larger neighbor and fellow Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) state, Saudi Arabia, in 67th rank. Meanwhile, among other GCC countries, Oman ranked 31, Qatar was at 38 and the UAE came in 40th position. If you thought this poor ranking was a characteristic of GCC states, then think again. At the top of the overall global rankings in 2018 was, drumroll please, the Kingdom of Bahrain.
Yes, it was another member of the close-knit GCC family that made it to the top, ahead of many other so called ‘developed countries’ in the Western world. Bringing up the remaining four in the top five countries that provided a welcoming environment for expatriates were Taiwan, Ecuador, Mexico and Singapore respectively. Meanwhile, joining Kuwait and Saudi Arabia in the bottom five of the pile were India in 66th position followed by Brazil and Turkey.
Incidentally, Bahrain pole position was not a flash in the pan; the country has consistently been ranked high in annual Expat Insider surveys, just as Kuwait has invariably been at the bottom. Kuwait has occupied the last position consecutively since 2014 till 2016, and losing that title to Greece only in 2017. It is quite dishearteningly to note that Kuwait regained that lost spot last year. So what does Bahrain get so wonderfully right, and Kuwait so woefully wrong? The answer appears to be, everything.
The survey focused on six essential topics that measure the tenor of life abroad for expatriates, namely: Quality of life, Ease of settling in, Working life, Family life, Personal finance and Cost of living. The ranking was also based on 48 individual rating factors for evaluating everyday life for expatriates. Bahrain easily outclassed Kuwait in all of these metrics.
Consider, for instance, Bahrain’s ranking in terms of Quality of life, where the country was ranked 20th globally. By contrast, Kuwait was right at the bottom of the ranking, along with Saudi Arabia, in providing the worst quality of life for expatriates. In the health and wellbeing subcategory, Bahrain was ranked 25th and Kuwait occupied a place just one step above the bottom. Bahrain (3rd) also led the way in the Quality of Education subcategory, while in Kuwait only 33 percent of expat parents were satisfied with education options in the country. The global average in this sub category was 67 percent.
In the ‘Ease of settling in’ index, Bahrain again received a big thumbs up from expatriates when it came to the sub-indices of friendliness (2nd out of 68), finding friends (2nd), as well as feeling at home (1st). By contrast, Kuwait ranked far below in most of these sub-indices and ended up at the bottom when it came to the ease of settling in. In particular, in the ‘Feeling at home’ sub-indice, Kuwait’s ranking was the lowest in the survey, with only 25 percent of expatriates living in the country saying they feel at home in the local culture. The global average for this sub category was 60 percent.
More than half the expats in GCC cite work or their partner’s career as the main motivation for their move abroad. But, with the exception of Bahrain, which ranked first in the Working Abroad Index, there was clear dissatisfaction among GCC expats regarding their working life. Qatar (35th), Oman (39th), and the UAE (46th) all performed below average, while once again Kuwait and Saudi Arabia were at the back of the pack in 64th and 66th positions, respectively.
Overall job satisfaction and job security across the GCC region was low, with Bahrain once again being the outlier and topping the world in this category. Seven in ten expats said that they felt secure in their job in Bahrain compared to the global average of 59 percent. All the five remaining five GCC states ranked in the bottom 15 when it came to job security.
In the Family Life Index, Bahrain ranked 7th out of 50 countries. Expats raising children in Bahrain were particularly happy with the quality of education (3rd), as well as the availability of childcare and education (9th). No expat parent in Bahrain expressed dissatisfied with family life in the country, and over nine in ten (95%) agreed that the attitude towards families with children is generally friendly. Kuwait placed 48th out of 50 countries ranked for this metric.
Safety and Security was seen to be the GCC states’ strongest subcategory, although there was again a big disparity between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and other countries in the region. The UAE (9th) and Oman (10th) both rank in the top 10; the UAE in particular stood out for personal safety, with 97 percent of expats feeling safe. Both Bahrain and Qatar also ranked comparatively well in the same subcategory, placing 23rd and 21st, respectively.
Most expats cited personal finance as one of the most important reasons for moving to the GCC states. However, while Bahrain and Oman lead the GCC States, ranking in 22nd and 24th place and Qatar came in at 30 and Saudi Arabia at 31, Kuwait was placed in 50th position and surprisingly the UAE in 59th place. Most expats in the UAE said their savings from salary each month was negligible. The redeeming feature for Kuwait was its powerful currency, the Kuwaiti Dinar, which when converted to local currencies of expatriate countries made a huge difference. But the impact from value of the Kuwaiti dinar was not part of the survey.
Finally in the ‘Cost of living’ category, Bahrain was again the least expensive country in the GCC placing 25th in the survey, followed by Oman (35) Saudi Arabia (39), UAE (55) Kuwait (59) and Qatar in 62nd place.
The Expat Insider survey, which reveals that Kuwait is the least attractive destination in the world for expatriates to migrate, should be an eye-opener to policy makers in Kuwait. Throwing out expatriates to fix the demographic imbalance, taxing remittances, increasing service fees or discouraging people from bringing their families, are all short-term recourses that are bound to backfire in the long term. When foreigners leave with bad memories of the quality of life in the country, it is difficult to imagine foreign investors rushing in.
Times Report
