What about corruption and arms deals?
While talking about how to handle the predicted deficit and excessively focusing on social subsidies and salaries, namely those of small employees and retirees, both the government and its financial advisor - the International Monetary Fund - have been avoiding discussing or even referring to certain expenses despite their significance in handling the financial deficit, such as expenses of huge arms deals and those resulting from political and institutional corruption.
The arms race and facilities related to it have been draining GCC states’ budgets, as a single huge deal costs what equals funds spent on necessary social needs for years to come, taking into consideration that social expenditure is part of a state’s public expenditure as well as the fact that the sole beneficiaries of such deals are weapons manufacturers, their local agents and some senior bureaucrats who get huge commissions for facilitating signing the contracts. According to an Al-Shall report on Sept 28, 2013, Kuwait’s military spending in 2012 was $6.021 billion (KD 1.686 billion), with an annual increase of about 10.2 percent.
In addition, one can talk about political corruption forever. Examples of abuse of powers and public positions to achieve personal gains and illegal wealth made by using public funds in profiteering, political deals and custom-tailored tenders are endless, not to mention the billions-worth foreign transfers and bank deposits, the high cost the state budget endures as a result of giving away state property and lands very cheaply on longterm contracts in very significant spots like the seafront extending along the Kuwaiti coast from north to south, Shuwaikh industrial area and Al-Rai (that all of a sudden and by powers of influential people turned into an investment and commercial area) and agricultural land holdings and ranches that are mainly being allocated for political reasons for long periods and contracts without changing the lease value to match that of the market. (Some of those lands still cost the same per square meter in rent since the 1960s!)
Therefore, treatment of the predicted deficit must be comprehensive, radical and fair because ignoring the huge arms deals about which we never have enough details about why we need them and political and institutional corruption issues that have been draining public funds, while at the same time pursuing a few dinars in the pockets of small employees and people with limited and small incomes would mean the continuation of extreme social bias in managing the state budget.
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