KUWAIT CITY, 10 November 2004 — Kuwait’s population rose 6.5 percent to 2.645 million in the first half of this year, from 2.484 million at the end of 2003, the Planning Ministry said yesterday.
The Kuwaitis’ share of the population dropped from 36.8 percent at the end of 2003 — the year of the US-led invasion of Iraq that rocked the region — to 35.7 percent by mid-2004, it said, quoted by the state news agency KUNA.
Expatriates made up 1.7 million of the total population on June 30, an 8.2 percent increase on 1.571 million at the end of last year. In 2003, foreigners rose 6.2 percent from 1.479 million in 2002.
Asians, who number 987,000, made up 37.3 percent of the total population and 58 percent of all expatriates in Kuwait. Many of them work as maids and in menial jobs.
Europeans numbered 9,000, Americans 12,000 and Australians some 1,000.
