Kuwait’s parliament has approved the next five-year development plan, which sets out a $116bn capital investment programme for the years up until 2020.

The five-year plan, which will run from April until March 2020, targets KD34.2bn ($116bn) of investment in major projects, from the planned new refinery to a new railway.

The plan also outlines how it will increase the number of Kuwaiti employees in the private sector from 92,000 to 137,000 by 2020. The number of expatriate workers in the private sector is currently about 1.2 million.

The five-year plan has been delayed by more than a year, with the previous five-year plan ending in December 2013.

The approval of the plan signals Kuwait’s intention to move forward with its ambitious infrastructure development plans, despite the falling oil prices. The proposed expenditure in the plan marks an increase on the $110bn set in the previous five-year plan. As with the majority of Kuwait’s budgets and economic plans in the past two decades, actual expenditure was much lower than the target during the previous plan.

The country has struggled to move ahead with key infrastructure projects in recent years due to problems gaining consensus between the government and parliament, and also inefficient tendering and procurement policies. It is hoped within government that the recent restructuring of the country’s public-private partnership (PPP) body, now called the Kuwait Authority for Public Partnerships (KAPP), will enable swifter progress with key major projects.

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