KUWAIT CITY, 30 November 2004 — If oil prices remain steady, Kuwait is poised to earn 9.04 billion dinars ($30.7 billion) in total revenues for the 2004-05 fiscal year that began April 1, the National Bank of Kuwait (NBK) said yesterday in its latest economic report.

Using a “base-case” scenario for oil income, the bank calculated that Kuwait Export Crude (KEC), which sells below the OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) basket price, would sell for an average $34.7 per barrel for the year. On that estimate Kuwait’s total oil earnings for the year would come to 8.45 billion dinars ($28.7 billion) from the 2.5 million barrels per day of oil that Kuwait produces.

Non-oil income was estimated at 584 million dinars ($1.98 billion), the report said. If Kuwait spends its entire 2004-05 budget allocation of 6.30-billion dinars, the state could expect to reap a surplus of between 2.54-billion and 2.88-billion dinars ($8.63 billion and $9.79 billion) before it deducts a mandatory 10 per cent of total earnings for the country’s future generations fund, said NBK.

Kuwait routinely underestimates its budget earnings and calculated this year’s tally sheet based on the emirate earning modest $15 per barrel of oil.

Meanwhile, Kuwait’s Ministry of Finance has announced on its website that as of the end of October, or seven months into its fiscal year, the state earned total revenues of 5.13 billion dinars ($17.4 billion).

That would be 54.7 percent higher that the estimated revenues for the entire fiscal year. Oil income made up 4.71 billion dinars ($16.02 billion) of that total, the ministry said.

Meanwhile, Kuwaiti banks yesterday began selling stock worth 336 million dollars in a newly established petrochemical company, marking the country’s biggest ever share sale. Some 990 million shares, or 90 percent of the total capital of Al-Qurain Petrochemical Industries Co (QPIC), the new share holding company, went on sale exclusively to citizens and companies owned by nationals for 100 fils (34 cents) per share, bankers said.

The initial public offering (IPO) will run until Dec. 16. The sale, launched by state-owned Kuwait’s Petrochemical Industries Co. (PIC) and the NBK, was initiated as part of the national privatization program and will enable citizens to cash in on profits from the country’s booming petrochemical industry, PIC Chairman Saad Al-Shuwaib told a press conference. The offering is valued at 99 million Kuwaiti dinars ($336.7-million). NBK is managing the sale.

QPIC is Kuwait’s second private sector shareholding company for petrochemicals after Boubiyan Petrochemicals was established in the mid-1990s as a 10 percent partner of the PIC-Dow Chemicals Company equal joint venture, Equate Petrochemicals, which set up the country’s first olefins plant.