KUWAIT: Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Secretary General Abdullatif Al-Zayani said the council is preparing a study on establishing a specialized authority to supervise executing the GCC railway project. Zayani also stressed that the project, whose blueprint phase is about to be finished, was going according to plan and would be concluded in 2018.

KPC meeting

Kuwait Petroleum Corporation's (KPC) Board of Directors is scheduled to meet today to discuss the corporate and subsidiary companies' budgets for the fiscal year 2016-2017. Notably, KPC's net profits hit KD 500 million, its operational cost is about KD 1 billion while its new projects cost KD 27 billion.

Asphalt

The Ministry of Public Works (MPW) announced contracting a British institute specialized in preparing asphalt mixes in order to select the most suitable ones for the ministry's future road projects. The ministry explained that the institute had already prepared three different mixes and specimens to use in paving three sample one kilometer-long stretches of roads, pointing out that assessing the specimens would take at least two years, so that the sample layers can be exposed to various effects of heat, cold, wind, rain and friction in order to eventually decide on the best mix to be used in future projects.

Oil prices

Chairman of the parliamentary priorities committee MP Yousef Al-Zalzalah said that the record fall in oil prices to around $40 per barrel necessitates taking a number of measures concerning the state's economic, financial and commercial strategies in order to contain negative effects on the state's budget. "According to international reports, there are no signs of oil price increases within the next two years," he underlined, pointing out that the world is currently in quest of alternative energies other than fossil fuel (oil), and that considerable sums were being invested in renewable energy. "Kuwait is part of this quest," Zalzalah said, noting that KISR was building a project to produce solar energy in Al-Shqaya oilfield and that a new strategy ought to be set to deal with economic and financial variables. Zalzalah criticized the government, noting that it was incapable of setting a new feasible economic and financial strategy. "Stock markets reflect the economy, therefore KSE's deterioration without having a clear governmental vision to undo it is unacceptable," he stressed.

By A Saleh