Late decision … dark future

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Elderly people resort to winning the love of their young grandchildren with the trick of sweets, as it is the most effective and most harmful way, and so it is with some governments that lavish money on their people to win their love, but this love will disappear with the cessation of sweets or gifts.

In a symposium on “Future Legislation and the 2035 Development Plan,” MP Abdel Wahhab Al-Essa stated that Vision 2035 is just ink on paper, and the government is working against it and is not serious about any economic reform.

The responses he received from Ministers Al-Sheetan and Al-Rushaid to his questions about the extent of the government’s ability to create half a million jobs for Kuwaitis after 15 years showed him that neither the two ministers nor the government are close to seeing the 2035 plan.

No party in the government has reason or belief in the plan, or to push the Silk City forward for geopolitical reasons long to be explained.

Therefore, it is very difficult to predict the future without approving a package of legislation, but the government is in one valley, the people are in another valley and the National Assembly is in a third valley as we notice that there are no development projects, nor the vision of Kuwait 2035 to any of the Assembly committees.

For example, the Finance Committee does not discuss restructuring the public sector and our national economy, but rather discusses dropping loans.

The Education Committee does not discuss reforming education, but it discusses increasing student rewards, and the Health Committee does not discuss developing the health sector, but rather discusses adding additional segments to Afiya insurance.

The Budgets Committee does not discuss reducing current spending and increasing capital spending, but rather discusses vacation allowance, and the party to blame in each is the government that did not introduce legislation and did not lead the legislative process.

On the other hand, the Secretary-General of the Planning Council, Mr. Khaled Mahdi, stressed that the goal of transforming Kuwait into a financial and commercial center requires the fulfillment of conditions, including that the leadership of the economy be assigned to the private sector, the development of human capital, and that we have a legislative environment that encourages investment.

The government in Kuwait sets, organizes, operates and monitors policies the same way of administrative institutions, so the problem is administrative.

The Ministry of Health, for example, is the one that sets health care policies, organizes, monitors, and operates the sector, therefore, development projects cannot proceed easily.

There is inflation in the public sector, poor implementation, mismanagement, and a loss of government vision.

The work of this plan failed, and its implementation was marred by deficiencies, and the main reason for that was the failure to assign issues and tasks to elements with competence and experience.

On the other hand, a member of the Board of Directors of the Kuwait Direct Investment Promotion Authority, Mohannad Al-Sanea, said that investment and encouraging investors depend heavily on development, encouraging investment and attracting investors is a state project, and this requires the presence of institutions, but they are idle and will remain so.

In addition, the private sector has been exhausted and emptied of its effective role and the power to take initiatives, and the blow to which Agility was subjected constituted an obsession for many investors in the private sector.

We have lost almost everything, and we are left with nothing but our huge financial reserves, the majority of which could be lost, either gradually through grants, salary increases and subsidies, or due to fluctuations in the financial markets and the collapse of global energy prices!

Meanwhile, the government submitted its budget bills for the year 2023-2024 to the National Assembly, which included significant increases in the salaries of state employees.

According to the referred draft laws, 10 entities did not exceed the increase in the expenses of the first chapter, amounting to one million dinars for each entity, including the “Roads Authority”, the Authority for Partnership Projects between the two sectors, and the Kuwait Direct Investment Promotion Authority with the continued support of many marginal parties or have not done any work for more than years.

The total amounts allocated to salaries and subsidies jumped by more than 3 billion dinars, offset negatively by a huge increase in oil production costs by more than 20%, which means a significant decrease in our profit margin.

Likewise, the oil and finance ministers are unable to address the imbalances that we complain about, or to fix the imbalance in expenditures and work to stop the waste of public money.

The future is not clear, and things are getting more complicated, day by day!

e-mail: [email protected]

By Ahmad alsarraf

This news has been read 25543 times!