Seminar addresses lifting subsidies
KUWAIT: Inflation rates in Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries over the past ten months of 2015 were less than 2 percent except in Kuwait, a recent report shows. The GCC Statistical Center recently issued a report about the GCC Consumer Price Index (CPI) for 2015, which is the first of its kind issued by the center within an initiative to build a general GCC CPI database by 2020. According to the report, CPI is of great significance for decision makers and could be used to limit unjustified price increases. It also describes the changes in the average price level of goods and services purchased by households and is a statistical estimate constructed using the prices of a sample of representative items whose prices are collected periodically. Sub-indexes are computed for different categories and sub-categories of goods and services, being combined to produce the overall index with weights reflecting their shares in the total of the household expenditures covered by the index.
The report stressed that building a CPI database would help in using it in various socioeconomic fields. The report also tackled foreign factors affecting inflation rates in GCC states. It notes that for the past six years, GCC inflation rates resembled international ones with a slight difference that started vanishing in 2012.
Lifting subsidies
Speakers at a seminar held recently at Al-Fadhalah Diwan under the title of 'Lifting Subsidies in View of Falling Oil Prices' agreed that the government should speak to citizens openly about the current economic situation. They also agreed that reform should start with senior officials, fighting corruption and stopping the squander of public funds before resorting to lifting subsidies. The prime speaker and host Yousif Saleh Al-Fadhalah said that with the first encounter with financial deficits, the government resorted to citizens as if they were the reason behind such deficits. "On the contrary, many well-off citizens have been playing the government's role by building schools, clinics and mosques at their own expense," he underlined, reminding of a recent donation by Qoraiyya Al-Qatami to treat 600 cancer patients. Meanwhile, former minister Ali Al-Moussa said that organizing the seminar reflects shortcomings in the government's performance. He also urged the government to be transparent with citizens. Former minister Ahmed Baqer meanwhile reminded of previous predictions about the current deficit as a result of depending on one source of income 'that we do not even control the prices of.' Baqer also noted that tenders worth billions of dinars had been given to individual non-KSE firms, and thus the profits they made did not benefit the Kuwaiti people and economy. On his part, economist Mohammed Ramadan called for avoiding citizens when considering economic reforms because it was merchants, industrialists and expats who most benefited from government subsidies. He also called to have graded categories to receive subsidies so that the most deserving families could actually get them.
© Kuwait Times 2016
