Economy of Kuwait: Development and role in international finance

The opportunity to write this book presented with an exciting challenge the trae nature of which only unfolded as our work pro greed. We were to write about an economy ander development. Yet the tremendous body of theoretical and general literature on develop ment economics at present available is devoted to circumstances which are almost totally inapplicable to Kawait. In particular, most works on the subject presume a shortage of capital relative to the ability to save However, Kuwait, and many of its fellow oil exporting states, are not faced with this problem. Instead, they need to find ways whereby the capital made available to them may be deployed to provide the maximum benefits for their countries, both now and in the future. We found it necessary, therefore, to develop a conceptual model which would reflect the aspirations of such countries, and to use it as a frame work to guide our investigations.

The statistical information available to us was quite extensive and was much more than experience elsewhere might have suggested we would find. In order to put the facts available into an ordered perspective, we needed to undertake much fieldwork and many inter views to understand the motivation and objectives of those in different sections of the economy whose advice and decisions were crucial to its operation or affected its relationships with the rest of the world. This was probably the most interesting part of our work and we hope that, through our interpretation of the facts of Kuwait's development, readers will gain a greater insight into the country's activities as expressed in its policies on conservation, internal development and foreign investment. We do not pretend that there is an overall guiding policy which dictates the activities of the various sectors and insti tutions which comprise the economy, but our interviews indicated the deve pment of a general philosophy from which such a policy will undoubtedly arise. We detected elements of this development among officials at all levels and in all branches of governmental activity, as well as in the private and the joint sectors.