Senior Kuwaiti official urges higher spending on research

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KUWAIT CITY, Jan 3, (KUNA): A senior official on Sunday marked Kuwait planned hosting of a conference on knowledge economy with a call for increasing spending on scientific research and overhauling the sectors of sciences and knowledge. Dr Hind Al-Sabeeh, the Minister of Social Affairs and Labor and Minister of State for Planning Affairs and Development, said administrative productivity and efficiency are attainable through hiking financial allotments for scientific research and creating an advanced “atmosphere for scientific applications and (theoretical) knowledge.”

Knowledge economy has become a main pillar for diversifying resources of income, said the minister, marking planned launch of the conference, themed “Contemporary State tasks from the perspective of knowledge economy,” on Feb 1. This type of economy enables the public and private sectors to nationalize competition, productivity, diversify income resources, overhaul business environment and lure foreign investors, she said.

Moreover, it is based on transforming “knowledge into commodities and services and creating financial wealth through optimum implementation” of its concepts. The upcoming conference, she said, implies a call on the government to improve its performance and upgrade its apparatuses for sake of bolstering efficiency and productivity; for such an approach leads to improving businesses.

Such objectives are achievable through increasing spending on scientific research and creating an atmosphere of applications and knowledge that may transfer Kuwait to creative education, minister Al-Sabeeh added, renewing the call for establishment of “Kuwait center for knowledge economy,” in partnership with international institutions.

The minister spoke of a bill, implementation of which will signal start of diversifying the income, explaining that “it is a law based in separation of economic activities from administrative authority and subjecting it to an economic board with independent jurisdictions for direct investments in partnership with the private sector.”

The proposal to hold this conference had been referred to the Supreme Council for Planning and Development, which blessed it. According to the World Bank, knowledge economies are defined by four pillars; institutional structures that provide incentives for entrepreneurship and the use of knowledge, skilled labour availability and good education systems, ICT infrastructure and access, and a vibrant innovation landscape that includes academia, the private sector and civil society

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