Investment outlook for the MENA region
Faisal Hasan, Senior VP of Investment Research Department at KAMCO talks about the investment outlook for the MENA region.
List of all articles filed under “kuwait-sectors” category.
Faisal Hasan, Senior VP of Investment Research Department at KAMCO talks about the investment outlook for the MENA region.
Elham Yousry Mahfouz, CEO of Commercial Bank of Kuwait talks about Commercial Bank of Kuwait, its history, strategy and differentiation.
Elham Yousry Mahfouz, CEO of Commercial Bank of Kuwait talks about the banking sector in Kuwait.
Elham Yousry Mahfouz, CEO of Commercial Bank of Kuwait talks about the major opportunities in the Kuwaiti banking sector.
Elham Yousry Mahfouz, CEO of Commercial Bank of Kuwait talks about the major risk for banks in Kuwait and regulatory framework.
Well they have to reform public education and by public I mean pre-university education. The reform shouldn’t come before establishing what the problems are. In my opinion, the only reason to establish what the problems are, is to have a uniform national exam for the country. You know, it’s alright that you have Kuwaiti public schools, it’s alright that you have British private schools, American or French or what have you. Of course for people who are going to Britain, they have to take exams that are required by the universities in Britain.
Most of the business is done in partnership with Kuwaitis. We have a law here that requires that for a business to be established here, it must have a 51% Kuwaiti partnership. But now there is a new department in the Ministry of Finance, the Foreign Investment Department. Under this, if a foreign direct investor wants to set up a new business, say to produce ethylene, or cement etc., they can own up to 100% stake in it.
Commercial Bank was established in 1960. That’s about 50 years of existence. It opened in this area, the commercial area. Most of the branches were also built in the commercial area, rather than in residential areas. This was corrected later on when the management of the bank realised it was necessary to have a presence in the residential areas. There will be further expansion itno the residential areas of new cities that are coming up.
Actually it’s a very crucial time for all the oil exporting countries, but mainly for my country Kuwait. As you quite rightly said, I was talking about the subject even when I was the Minister of Finance in 2006/2007. I was worrying about the point at which the oil prices would drop. A drop which is out of our hands and that’s what is happening now. Gentlemen, last night I was even checking with the Minister of Oil of Kuwait and I was also checking with one of our oil experts about the price of our oil at close of day on Friday. It is 54. 54, six months ago it was 100. So what does that mean for our budget?
We are attracting bigger companies in the health sector which we can add to our portfolios so we can expand in the medical, laboratory and pharmaceutical industries as well. We have other branches in Baghdad, Iraq and Erbil where we are operating and we are hosting some agencies and attracting more businesses.