KUWAIT: Kuwait’s government budget surplus stood at 14.7bn dinars ($52bn) in the first eight months of its fiscal year thanks to strong oil revenues, data from the Gulf country’s finance ministry showed.
The April-November surplus accounts for around 33.1 percent of the Opec member’s 2011 gross domestic product, according to a Reuters calculation based on the latest official data.
Total revenue was 21.6bn dinars while spending reached a mere 6.9bn dinars, around a third of the 21.2bn dinar total projected for the year. Kuwait had originally wanted to spend 14.2bn dinars by November, the data showed.
As part of plans to invest revenues more efficiently, authorities decided to increase the amount channelled into Kuwait’s Future Generations Fund, a nest egg for when oil supplies diminish or for when the economy suffers other shocks. A newspaper reported yesterday that assets in the fund totalled $261bn at the end of the last fiscal year. Reuters
