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Kuwait half year income exceeds full year target

KUWAIT CITY - Kuwait collected 14.52 billion dinars (54 billion dollars) in revenue in the first six months of the fiscal year, above its budget target for the whole year, the finance ministry said on Thursday.

The earnings are about 15 percent above projected revenues of 12.68 billion dinars (47.5 billion dollars) for the 2008/2009 fiscal year which began on April 1.

Oil revenues came in at 13.9 billion dinars (52 billion dollars), about 19.3 percent above budget projections for oil income.

In calculating budget revenues, Kuwait adopted a conservative price of 50 dollars a barrel for its oil, but the actual price for the first half of the year was above 100 dollars, before retreating recently.

Kuwait, which says it sits on 10 percent of global oil reserves, has been pumping about 2.6 million barrels per day.

Spending in the first six months was 5.52 billion dinars (20.6 billion dollars), less than a third of the 18.966 billion dinars (71 billion dollars) in budget outlays forecast for the whole year.

That leaves a preliminary first half budget surplus of nine billion dinars (33.7 billion dollars) although the budget projects a massive full year deficit of 23.5 billion dollars.

The first half figures put OPEC's fourth largest producer well on track to post a budget surplus for the 10th straight year.

In the past fiscal year which ended on March 31, the Gulf emirate achieved a record surplus of 9.33 billion dinars (35 billion dollars).

Based on official figures compiled by AFP, Kuwait has chalked up a total budget surplus of 30.35 billion dinars (113 billion dollars) over the past nine fiscal years starting with the 1999-2000 year.

The emirate, which has foreign investments worth 264 billion dollars, has a native population of just over one million, plus 2.35 million foreign residents.