KD 6.3 billion deficit in 2016-2017 budget
The 2016-2017 budget deficit totaled KD 6.3 billion till the beginning of March - a deficit of KD 5 billion plus KD 1.3 billion deducted for the future generations fund, well-informed sources said. Notably, Finance Minister Anas AlSaleh had stated two months ago that total expected revenues in the fiscal year 2017-2018 starting at the beginning of April would be KD 13.3 billion, while total expenditure would be KD 19.9 billion, which means a KD 6.6 billion deficit.
One-window department
Minister of Commerce and Industry and Acting Minister of State for Youth Affairs Khaled Al-Roudhan issued a decision suspending the acceptance of company foundation applications at the ministry’s partnerships department by the end of this month, and instead using the one-window department to file in such applications, where commercial license would be issued within a maximum of five working days.
Sports law
Meanwhile, Acting Director of the Public Authority for Sports (PAS) Humoud Flaiteh said the board of directors will meet on Sunday upon a request from Roudhan. Informed sources said Roudhan will discuss the final version of the new sports draft law set in collaboration between the government and the parliamentary youth and sports committee.
Delayed projects
Auditing bodies recently made repeated recommendations to Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) concerning extra delays in some of its projects and asked the company to coordinate with the State Audit Bureau to handle the reasons leading to the delays in the clean fuel and Al-Zour refinery projects. In a response KNPC submitted to the parliamentary budgets and final statements committee, KNPC stressed that both projects are a top priority during its weekly meetings, and that periodic meetings were held with the contractors to discuss any delays and overcome the problem. The same auditing remarks were made to Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC), urging it to accelerate the execution of oil projects according to schedules, control their cost and coordinate with auditing bodies and take their advice into consideration.