The Ministry of Finance is preparing to re-evaluate the state’s real estate, by introducing a three-year advisory practice, through which the property will be re-evaluated in accordance with the current market prices, especially since many of these properties are undervalued.
The Al-Qabas daily said the Ministry recently issued a decision to re-inventory and evaluate the state’s real estate assets, with an alert to conducting an accurate and comprehensive inventory in order to redress the assets in each ministry or government department, pointing out that a proper inventory leads to making correct financial decisions, and tightening control over the actual assets and the extent of their conformity with the records, and the degree of Its compatibility with the actual needs of business performance or production, and the extent to which it reflects the financial position of the state.
According to follow-up sources, the reasons for re-evaluation of assets to reflect their real value are due to several reasons, including:
— An increase in the rate of inflation during the recent period, while the value of assets remained the same for a long time, which necessitates the necessity of re-evaluation at fair prices.
— The government’s aim is to increase non-oil revenues, by taking several investment decisions specifically related to real estate, with the aim of improving its utilization, which makes it an essential tributary of revenues in the general budget, and pushes it to occupy the second place after oil revenues.
— The revaluation process adds billions of dinars to the total government assets, which supports Kuwait’s credit rating with international institutions.
The value of the state’s real estate assets witnessed a significant jump at the end of last year, as it recorded about 47.12 billion dinars, an increase of 187% compared to the estimated value of real estate assets during the fiscal year 2020-2021, when it was valued at about 16.4 billion dinars only.
The state’s real estate assets include all lands and buildings owned by government agencies, whether inside or outside the State of Kuwait.
The information system project enables those concerned to identify the areas of encroachment on state property, the value of those encroachments, fines and the cost of removing those encroachments. This system would also work to preserve old maps, prevent them from being damaged, and identify infringement.