Infrastructure Kuwait approves plan to tackle project delays By Nadim Kawach February 11, 2025, 10:32 AM Alamy via Reuters Projects in Kuwait have in the past been beset by delays Kuwait has approved a four-year plan to tackle persistent delays in development projects caused mainly by bureaucratic red tape and slow endorsement. The cabinet of ministers has informed all government departments of the plan, with focus primarily on project performance and completion on time, the Arabic language daily Alqabas reported. All departments must include key performance indicators (KPIs) in their project reports to cabinet, the paper said. “Ministries and other government institutions have also been told to list all project execution dates and the budget allocated to them.” The paper said reports presented by government offices to the cabinet about their projects must include the project name, its details, purpose, KPI, budget, name of agencies associated with the project and any obstacles blocking its completion. “All ministries and government offices must demonstrate in their reports a commitment to a timetable for the execution of the project,” it added. The Kuwaiti daily Al-Anba reported that the government created a committee to tackle project delays mainly in the oil sector. The committee would work to resolve delays in the payment of contractors awarded oil projects in a bid to speed up project execution, the paper said. The state-owned Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, which manages the Gulf country’s hydrocarbon industry, is spearheading plans to tackle the problem following complaints by contractors that they are not getting paid on time, the report said. Kuwaiti officials have repeatedly reported delays in project execution in recent years and some of those projects have never been started. In its report last month, the General Secretariat of the Supreme Council for Planning and Development highlighted long delays in the completion of nearly 93 of the 133 development projects in the first six months of the 2024-2025 fiscal year. Talks start with Kuwait hotel group on $125m Egypt project Kuwait project awards reach highest level in seven years Kuwait forecasts budget deficit of more than $20bn The report revealed that total expenditure for development projects by the end of the second quarter of the fiscal year was less than 10 percent of allocated funds. Total spending on 133 projects stood at just KD111.6 million ($368 million), out of an allocated KD1.2 billion for the fiscal year, it said. By the end of the second quarter, 71 percent of projects were behind schedule, about the same as over the previous year but higher than the 68 percent reported in the 2022-2023 plan, the report said.
