The spending of citizens and expats in Kuwait witnessed a decline of 17% to reach KD19.3 billion dinars during the year 2020, compared to a volume of KD23.3 billion in 2019, Al Anba daily reported. The decrease in consumer spending in Kuwait was likely due to the health measures taken by the government to close businesses in the first half of the year, to prevent the spread of Coronavirus in the country.
In addition, the travel restrictions imposed to confront the pandemic also had a hand to limit citizens’ travel abroad for tourism, and thus their spending decreased over the past year, in addition to the negative economic conditions that hit the private sector.
According to statistics prepared by Alanba daily and based on data from the Central Bank of Kuwait, the spending of citizens and expats recorded its lowest levels in the second quarter in the past year reaching KD3.2 billion only.
Then, spending increased during the third quarter of 2020, due to the gradual return of life to normal, the end of the curfew in the country and the return of business activities to work again, to reach KD5.4 billion in the third quarter, to rise again in the fourth quarter to about KD5.6 billion.
Points of sale and cash withdrawals
Returning to the statistics of citizens’ and expats’ spending, the value of transactions conducted through point of sale devices (PoS) (inside and outside Kuwait) in the past year amounted to about KD9.17 billion, an annual decline of 15% and a value of KD1.6 billion, compared to KD10.8 billion in 2019.
Point of sale transactions are divided into transactions that took place inside Kuwait at a value of KD8.8 billion during 2020, a decrease of 10.6%, compared to KD9.9 billion in 2019, while the value of transactions outside Kuwait amounted to about KD286 million, a decrease of 67%, compared with KD856 million in 2019. This is attributed to the great impact on citizens who were forbidden from travelling abroad during the past year.
With regard to transactions of ATMs “cash withdrawals” during the past year (inside and outside Kuwait), they amounted to about KD10 billion, a decline of 19% compared to KD12.5 billion dinars in 2019, divided into withdrawals at home amounted to KD9.9 billion, while the withdrawals done outside Kuwait, was about KD209 million in 2020.
560 million dinars were withdrawn by expats from their deposits in banks in 2020
Central Bank data revealed that there was a significant decline in the volume of expat deposits in Kuwait at the end of last year, reaching a level of KD6.9 billion by the end of December 2020, compared with KD7 billion at the end of December 2019, which means that expats in Kuwait withdrew about KD560 million from their deposits in the Kuwaiti banking sector during the past year. This was likely due to the historic decline in domestic interest rates during the past year.