Kuwait Regressing on Doing Business and Corruption

If anyone saw yesterday's newspaper, The Kuwait Times mentioned two separate articles on Kuwait's fall in ranking on two different studies, one on Corruption by Transparency International (a study that I mentioned last week on my blog, and the other on the ease of doing business in Kuwait. Regarding corruption, the article wrote:

KUWAIT: According to the Transparency International's yearly Corruption Perceptions Index, which measures perceived levels of public-sector corruption in over 170 countries, Kuwait has regressed five places internationally. The index is published by Transparency International, an anti-graft watchdog, and is included in the organization's Global Corruption Report 2009: Corruption and the Private Sector that was released in Berlin on Wednesday.

Kuwait came in 65th place in the index, tied with Cuba, while it came in seventh place among Arab countries. Kuwait's position remained the same in their previous index after failing to make any new steps to fight corruption.
The article on doing business in Kuwait reported that:

KUWAIT: Conducting business in Kuwait has become more difficult in the last year, according to a recently-released annual report conducted by the International Finance Organization and the World Bank. The report, which assesses the ease of doing business in various parts of the world, shows that Kuwait's rank has been deteriorating. The decline in the rank by nine points could affect the competitiveness of Kuwaiti market to attract foreign investors, which might delay achieving the government strategy to t
urn Kuwait into an international financial and trading center.

The study titled 'Doing Business 2010: Reforming through difficult times' ranked Kuwait in the 61st position among 183 countries covered by the study. Kuwait has slid down from the 52nd position when compared to the study conducted the previous year. The ranking is calculated according to the average obtained from nine different factors that regulate business concerns in the country, and whether they affect business and their development.

The most alarming detail about Kuwait's "doing business" status is the 'starting business' category, which looks into the number of procedures necessary to open a business, in addition to the cost of these procedures and the time range during which they can be completed. In this rank, Kuwait occupies the low 137th position, diving down from the 134th position back in 2009.

2 Responses on "Kuwait Regressing on Doing Business and Corruption"

  1. This is a great little post. Keep up the good work!

    Along the same line, you may be interested in

    http://thegulfblog.com/2009/07/17/differing-modes-of-development-kuwait-qatar-uae/

    Hope you're well.

    Victoria says:

    thanks david! yeah i hope you're doing good as well. i had read that article in july, its relaly interesting, so u r now in qatar? for how long?