Page 7 - Al-Rashed Newsletter July19

KUWAIT THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
KUWAIT NEWS

Kuwait at AA- outlook stable: S&P
Standard and Poor’s (S&P) has kept Kuwait credit rating at AA with stable outlook,
and said it could raise rating if the Gulf country carried out wide-scale political and
economic reforms. S&P released a report about credit rating of the State of Kuwait
regarding rationale behind the rating.
It said Kuwait economy remained dependent on oil which accounts for 90 percent of
exports and government revenues, and the country was the world’s 8th largest
crude oil exporter in 2018.

Middle East faces sharp decline in economic growth
Economic growth in the Middle-East is expected to face a sharp decline in 2019,
from the 1.5 percent in 2018 to 0.6 percent this year, in what is being considered the
steepest annual fall in over a decade.
However, Kuwait and its oil-rich neighbors would pull through the economic slump
and maintain rudimentary growth this year, but the key to sustaining and spurring
growth and development over the medium- to long-term will necessarily have to
come from the non-oil sector sector.
This economic assessment has been reiterated in the latest report on Middle-
Eastern economies by the UK-based Institute of Chartered Accountants in England
and Wales (ICAEW). The report noted that the slow growth in the region is being
driven by lower than expected global oil prices, and a deeper than projected
recession in Iran, one of the region’s largest economies.
Oil prices are now forecast to average around US$67 per barrel in 2019, down by
around 5.6 percent from the average of US$71 per barrel last year. Lower oil prices
pose a challenge for a number of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries that
rely heavily on hydrocarbon receipts to balance their budgets, notably Bahrain and
Oman. In the GCC, the burden of generating economic growth and employment this
year, and in the immediate future, is expected to shift more and more to the non-oil
sector.

Source: Arab Times, Times Kuwaiit