KUWAIT CITY, 29 March 2006 — Kuwait posted record 12.4 billion dinars ($42.6 billion) revenues in the first 11 months of the fiscal year ending this week, the Finance Ministry said yesterday.
Meanwhile, a confidential report put the emirate’s assets at $164 billion.
The revenues, the largest in Kuwait’s history and likely to swell by several more billions at the close of the year, are 56 percent up on the $27.4 billion posted in the year-earlier period. They are almost threefold budget estimates of $15.7 billion for the whole fiscal year, which ends Friday.
Oil revenues soared to $40.4 billion, up 60 percent on last year and more than threefold the budget estimate of $13.3 billion, according to figures published on the ministry’s website. The increase is due to a sharp rise in both the price of Kuwaiti oil and production.
Oil income had been calculated at a conservative price of $21 a barrel, while the average price has topped $50.
Kuwait has been pumping around 2.6 million barrels per day, above its OPEC quota of 2.247 million bpd. Non-oil revenues remained almost unchanged at $2.2 billion compared to $2.15 billion.
Spending in the first 11 months was 4.4 billion dinars ($14.9 billion), and the figure is certain to rise sharply after year-end accounting adjustments. The full-year budget projects expenditure of $24.7 billion.
From 1999 2000 to 2004 2005, Kuwait accumulated more than $30 billion in budget surplus, and is expected to post more than $23 billion this year. By law, 10 percent of total revenues is placed in the Kuwait Fund for Future Generations. Returns on the fund’s assets, estimated at $5 billion a year, do not figure in the budget.
Al-Qabas daily, quoting a confidential ministry report, said KFFG assets stood at $128 billion last month, exceeding the $120 billion it had before the Iraqi invasion in 1990.