KUWAIT: Kuwait National Petroleum Company (KNPC) officials held several meetings with representatives of five international banks to negotiate the prices and interest rates of funding the second phase of the Clean Fuel Project. Informed sources stressed that negotiations have been almost concluded and that an agreement would probably be signed before the end of this year.

Empathy list

A new study by over 104 researchers from 63 different countries at Michigan, Chicago and Indiana universities showed that Kuwait ranked tenth worldwide and third in the Arab world in terms of empathizing with world issues and concerns, while Saudi Arabia stood first amongst Arabs and second worldwide after Ecuador. The study found Lithuania was ranked last in terms of empathizing with others. One of the researchers, William Chopik, said the study's results were surprising as they had expected the US to come first on the list instead of seventh. The top ten countries were Ecuador, Saudi Arabia, Peru, Denmark, UAE, South Korea, USA, Taiwan, Costa Rica and Kuwait.

Profit tax

The assessment and tax claims manager at the finance ministry Aseel Al-Munaifi said that the ministry has referred the business profit tax law to the fatwa and legislation department for further study. Munaifi explained that the law suggests imposing a 10 percent tax on companies' profits starting from 2021. She added that the total income from this tax and the value added tax due to be passed by GCC would be around KD 800 million.

Scrap site

Kuwait Municipality's deputy director for organizational affairs Mohammed Al-Zobee invited a number of municipality officials to a special meeting to discuss relocating the municipality's vehicle impoundment and scrap site during the first half of 2017 to a new location to the south of Saad Al-Abdullah. In the meeting, Zobee distributed various tasks to municipality officials and explained that the total cost of preparing the project would be KD 1 million.

Road development

The State Audit Bureau has notified the Ministry of Public Works (MPW) of its approval of two agreements made to supervise two tenders to develop Al-Ghouss Street from Sabah Al-Salem till the Seventh Ring Road and from the Fifth Ring Road to the Sixth Ring Road, said MPW's assistant undersecretary for maintenance engineering affairs Ahmed Al-Hessan. He added that the total cost of Wafra highway project, of which 10 percent is already complete, would be KD 82 million.

 

By A Saleh