The 2013-2014 ‘Global Competitiveness’ report ranked Kuwait the worst GCC country in:
1. Access to loans
2. Direct foreign investment
3. Government surplus/deficit
4. Financial services
5. Quality of primary education
6. Quality of higher education
7. Quality of math and science education
8. Procurement of advanced technology products
9. Intellectual property protection
10. Bribes
11. Governmental laws
12. Brain drain
13. Extent of staff training
14. Starting a business
15. Technology transfer
Ouch. [PDF]
via Kazima
55 replies on “Kuwait lagging behind GCC in all fields”
I can’t say that I’m surprised smh
how come the score for macroeconomic environment is 6.7/7 and everything else sucks?
I have no idea what that is even, maybe someone can enlighten us.
Just looked it up, page 241. The government has a good surplus and no debt basically, there are a lot of national savings, Inflation isn’t too high and the country itself has a good credit rating.
Guessing the fact that there’s a lot of money flowing around, it’s just completely wasted
I love Kuwait but i think it should and could be better. Instead of working in cracking down. They should be working in building up. Road problems? Build more transport options, build bigger roads, bridges. Not crack down on drivers. This is just an example but you can see this in every sector.
bigger roads?????? size of roads is definitely not a problem
Is that why we have daily traffic?
facepalm. that’s not down to the size of the road
Thanks for sharing *Thumbs Up*
Well no duuh.
“Government Surplus/Deficit” This one is pretty good though. I mean if there’s ONE thing Kuwait is good at it’s having spare cash, let’s forget the issue of figuring out how to properly spend it
Skip to page 240 for the kuwait summary btw
The most problematic factors for doing business
Inefficient government bureaucracy ……………………………..20.9
Restrictive labor regulations ………………………………………..18.0
Access to financing …………………………………………………..11.5
Corruption …………………………………………………………………9.0
Policy instability ………………………………………………………….7.3
Inadequately educated workforce ………………………………….7.1
Poor work ethic in national labor force …………………………..7.1
I don’t know if I’ll get Mark in trouble for saying this, but #1, #2, #3, #4, #5 are all DIRECTLY the fault of policymakers, or maybe the fact that we don’t HAVE policymakers
Policymakers? do we even have policymakers? I don’t think so.
Well a bit hard to do so when you haven’t had a real parliament in 8 years
We just pledged 500m to Syria whilst our roads decay, our hospitals are embarrassing our public education a disgrace…..
says it all
at least Syria is truly needs money people there are desperate.
in the past we gave 500m to the US after katrina hurricane & gave japan 500m after the tsunami and so on
we also pledged billions to Bahrain and several other Arab countries
more than 3bn given to syria over past years
I don’t think the US needed 500m they could have taken that out of their military budget (biggest in the world). It would have been better spent locally.
Same goes for Japan.
500m is not a lot in terms of Kuwait’s wealth, they can afford it and STILL build new roads and fix schools. Issue is not money.
+1
Point remains.
Why are we throwing away our money on external countries before benefitting and fixing our own issues? Benefitting our own people?
If Kuwait was perfect, then sure, give away as much money as needed.
The money is not issue, it’s the government bureaucracy and incompetence. For example, You can budget billions of KDs to build a metro, but the government is still doing committee meetings and the ministries are fighting over jurisdictions and responsibilities. The public sectors is simply too bloated to achieve anything.
um i think ‘our own people’ are taken care of well enough
when we actually need it and our situation is in a dire situation i.e sadly egypt and other countries, help will come quickly.
blame the democratic system, if we kept the same situation as qatar uae saudi (yes also moving much quicker in some places i.e hayil) then things would move much quicker rather than fighting over we should do this or that. Centralised power is much better, or if people are scared can make a minor split in power similar to UK in where decisions are made by the sheikh but if it is something very out of hand that is decided there is a governing body (whatever you call it) that can overthrow that decision etc.
Kuwait’s parliament is the reason we’re behind all GCC states. You’re right. Our democratic experiment is hindering the country’s development. I hope the parliament is dissolved permanently and doesn’t come back until the country re-builds itself. The development plan will never move forward if the government doesn’t get rid of the parliament.
Dissolve the parliament, don’t bring it back. Democracy doesn’t work in Kuwait, there’s too much corruption, our MPs and ministers are too corrupt. All of Kuwait’s election results are rigged anyway, the government always gerrymanders voting constituencies.
Gerrymandering has been the predominant feature in Kuwait’s democracy experiment since the 1980s. Kuwait needs an autocratic regime like the governments of UAE and Qatar.
An autocratic regime would work…provided the rulers aren’t extremely corrupt.
This is what the rulers would like you to think actually
Ok I’m not on my phone so I can write a bit more about this.
Democracy will never work when it isn’t given a chance to work. We haven’t had a full parliamentary term in a LONG time… you can do the math yourself and see why. When we have constantly dissolving governments and 0 progress the natural option is thinking “Ah the parliament must not be doing their job” but think about who gains the most from you thinking that. If there was no parliament do you really think corruption would stop? No, it would just be concentrated somewhere else. Being vague for obvious reasons but you can figure it out I’m sure
democracy will NOT work. PERIOD. Atleast not in middle east, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, things work in some places don’t work in others. No problem with that.
As I have said before… Kuwait will rank worse than the rest of the GCC because it is the only GCC country that has people collecting genuine data.
UAE will not tell you the truth about their bribery status or other nasty things. Same applies to the rest of GCC.
So you think Kuwait isn’t more corrupt than Bahrain and Saudi Arabia? Bahrain has a higher human development index than Kuwait + the Bahrainis are successfully diversifying their economy.
Bahrain’s economy is in a bad place and they are diversifying because they don’t have much in terms of options. If they really do have a higher HDI that’s a complete joke, you know there are still violent protests going on in Bahrain frequently, and what they’re about right?
State of affairs is really getting very poor in Kuwait. They have all the money in the world yet fail to fix their roads even.
Look at how pathetic some roads are , they literally cause our wheels to bend or crack 🙁
I’m an expat but I have to say most concerning issue is education, I mean seriously something have to be done concerning the education level in Kuwait otherwise the country will be in deep trouble in the next century!
I don’t think the ‘starting a business’ is correct, how can it be? startups are booming more than any other GCC country ??
The process is not conducive to business. Have you actually tried to set up a company, or try something as simple as applying for a license. It takes months and months of paperwork and running around the ministries, and in the end you may or may not get the trade license you are looking for.
Once you get past that, there is the IP (Intellectual Property) problem, in that the process is just rubber stamping and there is practically zero enforcement.
Step onto the world of financing. There may be free money flowing around like a giant fondue fountain, but the reality is that startup loans, venture capital is very restrictive. Take something as simple as getting a loan from a bank, a person working in the govt. sector can be easily approved for X amount, while a business owner may be approved for 1/5th of X amount.
Then there is a problem of shares and public ownership; or listing an establishing a company; rules like mandatory local ownership don’t actually say “we support business”; lets not mention the fact that you can issue but one type of share in your company.
Next is the problem of availability of infrastructure or lets just say govt. investment. Startups need an ecosystem and there simply isn’t one in Kuwait (its being developed, but with absolutely no support from the government).
Put that all together and now compare it with a place like the UAE where these processes are streamlined and transparent.
Just keep in mind a startup is not a new type of business (like say, opening a new burger joint), a startup is a business that has never existed before. For example, sheeel.com isn’t a startup (its actually a copy of woot.com), but fishfishme is because there has never been a business like that in Kuwait.
Sorry for the long comment 🙂
I feel very sad for you Kuwait. Your government does not love you…despite giving these people everything they would ever need.
Many Kuwaitis are unemployed and poor: https://news.kuwaittimes.net/poor-kuwait/
Qatar and Kuwait have the highest GDP per capita from the GCC countries. Def not poor..
Tell us something we don’t already know. Like something positive, those are nice to hear sometime and they surprise most people.
Lighten up guys. We’re still the undisputed no.1 when it comes to:
Burgers
Arrogance
Diabetes and
Grilling MPs
….and architecture
dont forget diabetics,obesity,road traffic accidents and deporting people 😉
Kuwait’s obesity level is exaggerated, propaganda-like. Qataris are a lot fatter than Kuwaitis.
oops.. diabetes was mentioned allready.. my bad.. could we throw racisim into the hat ??
Kuwaiti isn’t a race. Kuwaiti people are ethnically and racially diverse in ancestry, racism isn’t an issue because ”Kuwaiti” isn’t a race.
Lol
If you meant that as a serious reply and not a joke; I really don’t have any hope for you.
Lol
Maybe chauvinism is the word we’re looking for.
oh dear lord…. can i have my share from the oil fields please…i want to leave the country permanently…. please sheikh sabah gimme my share now…