26/11/2020
26/11/2020
A FEW days ago, Reuters broadcast a news item on a statement issued by the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The statement indicated Johnson’s plan to announce next week that he will ban the sale of new cars powered by petrol and diesel from 2030, which is five years earlier than his previous statement on the same subject, as reported by the Financial Times newspaper last Saturday.
Britain had originally planned to ban the sale of new cars powered by petroleum and diesel in 2040, as part of its effort to reduce carbon emissions affecting the atmosphere. In February, Johnson reduced the timeline to 2035, and it is said that he, in a speech he intends to deliver next week, is planning to reduce it further to 2030.
We dedicate this news to the geniuses among our financial and oil experts, as the newspapers published a report on Monday, Nov 16 to state that the total oil and non-oil revenues during the first quarter of the 2020/2021 fiscal year amounted to KD 1.3 billion, while the total expenditures and financial obligations during the same period amounted to KD 2.4 billion, so the first quarter recorded a primary deficit of only KD 1.8 billion.
It is worth noting that the budget figures for the first quarter revealed that oil revenues had the largest share of the total budget revenues. Oil revenues achieved a value of KD 1.3 billion during the first quarter of this year, while non-oil revenues during the same period reached KD 52.6 million.
All we do in such a difficult financial situation, which will become more difficult in the coming days, is to place blame on our rational governments that have not developed an income center for us except oil and its derivatives. Most of it is sold as crude oil, and there is no place to take credit for that, especially those who represent us in our only source of livelihood.
They are the ones who think they deserve credit for feeding us and spending on us. Here I mean the leadership in the oil sector and its subsidiaries, many of which are in the hands of our fundamentalists who are there to support their kind.
We tell them loud and clear that they absolutely deserve taking any credit in the oil sector, which our brothers in humanity – the British people and rulers – had discovered. They built for us the best cities in our “Ahmadi” homeland, extracted our oil and bought it from us at the lowest prices. From this, we became rich, and we began to brag to our regional brothers about having money before they discovered their own money.
They discovered their oil and developed its industries as well as launched in parallel some income generating projects that have nothing to do with oil, something which we have not yet done.
We ask our rational government and those who think that they are the ones who discovered oil for us – What will you do if the children of Bin Naji (the British) and their kind from countries of understanding and advancement cease to need our oil?
All that is left to be said on this occasion is the popular adage – “Soak your oil and drink its water”.
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By Ali Ahmed Al-Baghli
Former Minister of Oil