Sunday, December 13, 2009

Opening a Business in Kuwait

Want to hear figures that will make your eyes roll? During a speech by Safa Al-Hashem last week, she mentioned figures on how long it takes to open a business in Kuwait.

126 mandays to open a business in Kuwait
4 mandays to open a business in Bahrain
2 hours to open an offshore business in Bahrain.

Isn't that just sick?
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8 comments:

don_veto said...

Your stats are shocking, but there are ways around it. I called someone advertising in the local classified papers and opened a business in a matter of 3 weeks in Kuwait. I had to pay a little extra, but its possible.

December 13, 2009 at 3:58 PM
turtle clock said...

80% of statistics are made up on the spot.

December 13, 2009 at 11:06 PM
nYx said...

I feel that whatever Kuwait is doing in respect to economy and business is good; tell you why:
If Kuwait goes the Bahrain or Dubai way we all know the repurcussions! A conservative approach by this mammoth oil producer and exporter is great. People can say whatever they want; A capitalistic approach is something the world is shunning (the recession of 2009 is ample proof for negating this order); thus a conservative sustained growth is what Kuwait has aimed and will continue in doing so. Kuwait faired awesome in standing up to recession and the effects were not big as of other nations of the same aptitude. Fine, a lot of jobs were cut; but they were mostly from business sectors serving American and other established economies. Local conservative small mid and large scale Kuwaiti business houses remained largely untouched.

Am not negating whatever you said but flip side analysis prove that whatever are the un true (from my point of view) so called 'unfriendly business attitude' of Kuwait is just hog wash and am a strong supporter of the current laws encompassing the Ministry of Commerce. My two cents.

December 14, 2009 at 12:36 PM
B_G_T_R said...

nYx: what always saves Kuwait is not its "conservative" business attitude but rather its black gold. Regardless of the statistics, we are dead last in the Gulf despite the wealth of local talent that we have. and why is that? Because we have an incompetent, in bed with large business kind of officials that simply do not care how does Kuwait or even Kuwaitis fare!. You have got a population that is largely living on subsidies, which is fine by me, but there is hardly any production of anything besides what gets drilled out of the ground. Basically any Joe Schmo could be running this country’s affairs and it will still be saved. As long as the barrel stays above $50 and the dollar does not depreciate too much.

December 14, 2009 at 3:45 PM
nYx said...

BGTR
I’ll answer point to point:
Black gold was on its knees a few months ago after a strong rally of being priced well over $150.00 – didn’t create much ruffles in Kuwait.

Kuwait firmly believes in unity within the GCC which proves that Kuwait doesn’t promote rat race jealousy – so forget the stats of standing within GCC. Kuwait always promotes regional progress & peace and doesn’t really care for such statistics.

Subsidies are provided by every government - it can be in the form of commodities or social services – doesn’t the US provide subsidies in Health Care? 90% of people below a certain segment of developed economies are living off social security services – be it health, education or housing! You don’t see those subsidies and point fingers towards Kuwait?

The barrel of oil has come a long way despite the effects of Iraqi invasion in ’91; inflation is still under control – it stands at a healthy level of 2.8% on commodities; come to growth - Kuwait progressed 4.9% by the 2nd quarter results of FY 2009 – projected was 8% that’s a 3.1% drop off the projection due to recession (and black gold was on its knees) thats fantastic! “Sustained Conservative Approach”, I’ll say. I’ll bet my last Dollar when the 2009 Q4 results come out, I won’t be surprised to see a beautiful figure of above 6% growth.
By the way the Dinar is no longer pegged to the Dollar.

December 15, 2009 at 10:18 AM
Unknown said...

The problem gets bigger and bigger after opening: no banks are going to support you, you can't have a SOHO which will eventually led to too much expenses and it will eventually ends up, specially those days, by either closing it or selling it all, or most of it, to local person who wants you to work as an employee again !!!
too pessimistic? sorry :(

December 20, 2009 at 12:09 PM
Timmy said...

To NYX:
You don't care for statistics? LOL Maybe Kuwait doesn't care for statistics that it doesn't like.

December 24, 2009 at 3:28 PM
Desert Girl said...

nYx -

Methinks thou do protest too much. :)

Sorry dude, but I have a more pessimistic view on the state of affairs for business in Kuwait.

March 4, 2010 at 8:50 AM

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