06/02/2023
35092 times read
06/02/2023
35092 times read
Banking data revealed that consumer spending for citizens and residents in Kuwait during 2022 recorded a large jump by 22%, at a value of 7.6 billion dinars, to reach an unprecedented record, reaching 42 billion dinars, compared to 34.3 billion dinars in 2021.
The reason for this was the rise in oil prices and the improvement in the pace of consumer spending, with the end of the “Corona” restrictions, and the accompanying delay in paying citizens’ installments for a whole year, and residents’ installments for six months, this led to the availability of large liquidity in everyone’s hands, in addition to, of course, the huge sums that were spent on the front rows, and nearly 600 million dinars were spent for retirees, 400 million to buy earned annual leave, and much more.
The Government data also revealed an increase in consumer and installment loans, during 2022, to approximately 18 billion dinars ($58 billion), which some indigent people demand that the government pay to banks on their behalf and drop these loans from their names!
We do not need an economic analyst here, but rather a psychological analyst, who can explain to us or understand how some people think.
How can citizens and residents spend 42 billion dinars in one year, while the entirety of what the state spent in the same year on the salaries of the entire nation, including the army, education, health and various subsidies is 26 billion dinars or more than what the state spent at a rate of 62%?
This means that individuals and families have large savings, and this refutes all allegations and complaints that there are 550,000 citizens who are borrowers and live in financial hardship, and no one has tried to explain these numbers that leave Kuwait during every Eid or go on vacation every year.
On the other hand, the Central Administration of Statistics, in cooperation with the Planning Council and a United Nations program, which are entities that inevitably employ bank borrowers, announced that the average monthly income of a Kuwaiti family in 2021, without calculating the rental value, amounted to 4,000 dinars (about 13 thousand dollars). These numbers were reached from 4032 families from all governorates.
The average monthly expenditure for a non-Kuwaiti family in 2021, without calculating the rental value, amounted to 1071.3 dinars.
These numbers do not lie and are irrefutable and clearly show that the situation of 98% of Kuwaiti families, and the borrowers in particular, is good, and some of them are more than that, and therefore the idea of canceling or buying the loans of 100% of the borrowers is deplorable, destroying morals and wasting public money, without logical reason.
We repeat that dropping loans is a moral issue before it is financial.
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By Ahmad alsarraf