SCPD briefs WB on ‘policy interventions’ toward jobs, knowledge reform in Kuwait
NJS and KIPS initiative outcomes highlighted
WASHINGTON, Oct 13, (KUNA): Secretary General of the Kuwait’s Supreme Council for Planning and Development (SCPD) Dr. Khaled Mahdi held on Wednesday a presentation at the World Bank (WB) on Policy Interventions towards Jobs and Knowledge Reform that are being undertaken in Kuwait.
The presentation was to highlight the outcome of the National Jobs Strategy (NJS) and Knowledge Index for the Public Sector (KIPS) in Kuwait, which focus on how to make the transformation to a knowledge based economy that are part of the Kuwait National Development Plan.
In an interview with KUNA on the sidelines of the presentation, Dr. Mahdi said that he is here “to demonstrate the productive relationship between the World Bank and Kuwait and how successful is the knowledge partnership we had in making evidence-based policies interventions to create proficient and efficient job market in Kuwait.”
Mahdi added, “we discussed the human capital development requirements, what the private sector needs, what the public sector must to be improve as well as the necessity of building social protection system away from public employment.”
Components
As for the KIPS, Mahdi noted “the index consists of three components, which are the human capital, organizational capital and network capital.”
“We did a test on 20 organizations, with more than 2200 people providing us with enough information to come up with a ranking of what are the main entities in Kuwait with a very high knowledge, a medium knowledge management and poor knowledge management,” he added.
He continued that the main finding was that “Kuwait Investment Authority scored the highest followed by the oil sector superseded all the entities in Kuwait when it comes to knowledge management.”
For his part, Resident Representative of the WB Office in Kuwait Ghassan Al-khoja told KUNA “we’re very happy as the World Bank to have partnered with Kuwait to support them in developing these reports.
But we are also more happy that Kuwait has developed this knowledge and is now sharing this knowledge with the rest of the world.”
On the NJS, he said, “it falls firmly into all the policies that are being implemented in Kuwait towards reforming and ensuring that Kuwaitis have better job opportunities in the private sector.”
He added that both of these initiatives are considered “best practices that we’ve seen in the region. In fact, the National Jobs Strategy is now being looked at by many other countries so they can emulate a similar approach.”