In response to previous statements attributed to him that warn of an acute shortage of liquidity, Kuwaiti Finance Minister Barak Al-Shaitan affirmed that "employee salaries and support allowances will never be affected."
"The government is responsible for ensuring adequate liquidity for the disbursement of salaries," Al-Shaitan explained during the National Assembly’s discussion of the draft public debt law and the draft law on future generations, stressing that “employees’ salaries and support allocations will not be affected, and we as a government are responsible for ensuring sufficient liquidity for the salaries to be disbursed. Based on the state’s financial situation, the matter requires joint work between the government and the National Assembly to endorse the government's vision of filling the deficit and providing the required liquidity.”
The statements were previously circulated by the Minister of Finance before Parliament, in which he warned that Kuwait has two billion dinars (equivalent to 6.6 billion dollars) of cash in its treasury and is not sufficient to cover the state's salaries after the month of October.
During a session of Parliament, Shaitan revealed to the deputies that the available liquidity is sufficient to cover salaries until next November, and it is expected that the general budget deficit will reach 14 billion dinars (45.8 billion dollars).
In addition, the Kuwaiti National Assembly (Parliament) approved new legislation that makes financial transfers to the Future Generations Reserve Fund (the country's sovereign fund) conditional on achieving a budget surplus, which will provide the government with more than $ 12 billion of the liquidity Kuwait desperately needs.
Source (Asharq Al-Awsat Newspaper, Edited)
