KUWAIT: The Ministry of Public Works (MPW) announced finishing around 24 percent of the Al-Bida Roundabout project, said the project's supervising engineer Alaa Al-Torki, noting that the ministry is keen on concluding the project ahead of schedule.

Torki added that the Blajat street will be closed soon and that a detour will be used to divert traffic until the flyover construction work was over. Torki said that the project, scheduled to conclude in January 2019, involves building a 670 meter long flyover connecting the Blajat and Al-Taawon streets.

Kuwait's suspension

FIFA council is due to meet in Kolkata , India on October 27 to discuss a number of issues including the suspension of Kuwait Football Association (KFA). The FIFA council has many liabilities including finding proper solutions in countries experiencing domestic disputes such as the case in Sudan and Cameron.

Various Kuwaiti institutions are working hard to lift the suspension through cooperation between various sports clubs, sportsmen and the government represented by the Acting Minister of Youth Affairs Khaled Al-Roudhan, in addition to a Qatari initiative on bridging the gaps between Kuwait and the FIFA.

Qatar football association had handed over Kuwait's new sports law to FIFA officials at the sidelines of the 23rd Gulf Cup of Nation's draw that was held in Doha, where the GCC Union's Secretary General Jassem Al-Romaihi stressed that all GCC states are exerting considerable efforts to lift the suspension of Kuwait sports to make sure the national team takes part in the championship.

KFA's Secretary General Mohammed Khalil Al-Ameen said that the temporary transitional committee invited all clubs to hold an extraordinary general assembly on October 31 to elect a new board of directors according to KFA's chart where each club nominates two candidates to join the 14-member board leaving Sheikh Ahmed Al-Yousif as the only candidate for the chairmanship so far.

Complaints

Health minister Dr Jamal Al-Harbi issued a ministerial decision on allocating Mondays for health zone directors to receive citizens' grievances and complaints. Speaking during his weekly meeting with citizens, Harbi said that he noticed that many of the complaints he received could have been solved with health zones.

Investments

Economic sources said that total expenditure on investments in the past six years should have been more than sufficient to provide thousands of job opportunities for citizens, which never happened.   The sources added that those astronomical figures did not result in creating job opportunities for citizens and stressed that unemployment is still at high rates, especially with government bodies' failure to absorb more Kuwaiti employees, which led to more calls to 'Kuwaitize' all public sector jobs.

The sources noted that according to a statement made by Minister of Commerce and Industry, Acting Minister of Youth Affairs Khaled Al-Roudhan, Kuwait had attracted $7 billion-worth of direct and indirect foreign investments over the past three years. The sources said that unemployment rates were still high despite the fact that the total public and private investments over the past few years added up to $40 billion. Central Statistical Bureau statistics showed that the total number of unemployed citizens dropped from 19,061 in 2012 to 14,822 in 2017.

Value added tax

Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Anas Al-Saleh stressed that the value added tax (VAT) law and its executive chart would consider avoiding any negative impacts of its implementation. He added that the finance ministry had reviewed other countries' VAT experiences and consulted with the IMF and the World Bank.

Responding to a parliamentary inquiry made by MP Khalil Al-Saleh, the minister stressed that the GCC VAT Agreement was made in view of a study presented by IMF to GCC secretariat general. Saleh added that the study recommended imposing a five percent tax on goods and services and stressed that this percentage will be the least compared to other countries that have already implemented VAT.

By A Saleh