The latest demographic data issued by the Public Authority for Civil Information and the National Bank of Kuwait shows the population of Kuwait decreased by 0.9 percent during the first half of 2021 to 4.62 million, after decreasing by 2.2 percent annually in 2020.
In its economic report, the bank attributed this decline mainly to the continued decline in the number of expatriates, while the number of Kuwaitis continued to increase in the face of continued Kuwaitization of jobs and the weak economic environment following the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic which forced companies to lay off their staff which prompted thousands of expatriate families to leave the country.
The report, according to Al-Rai daily, attributed this to a decrease in the number of expatriates by about 1.8 percent, while the number of Kuwaiti citizens witnessed a modest growth of 0.9 percent, amid a decline in the proportion of expatriates to the total population to 68.2 percent, which is the lowest level recorded in 10 years. The data also shows more than 56,000 expatriates left the country in the first half of 2021.