Kuwait on a Spending Spree

KUWAIT CITY, 20 December 2004 — Buoyed by its most stable security situation and highest income in three decades, Kuwait is on a spending spree, pumping dozens of billions of dollars into giant projects. Top oil executives said they plan to spend up to $40 billion over the next 15 years to modernize the emirate’s lifeline industry, which provides 90 percent of public revenue. A large number of mega civil projects, costing billions of dollars, are in the pipeline, including a $1.2-billion state-of-the-art container port to cope with an expected high demand from neighboring Iraq.