Kuwait Investment Authority to cost $184m

10 August 2010

Authority manages assets worth $250-300bn

Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) will cost KD52.8m ($184.6m) to run in 2010 and 2011.

The authority, which oversees Kuwait’s two main state-run funds, the General Reserve Fund and the Future Generations Fund, will spend KD52.82m to staff its operations while generating revenues of KD20,000 in the year to May 2011, a state report shows.

The emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al Jaber al-Sabah, passed the budget during a meeting on 25 July. The decision was published in early July in Kuwait’s official gazette.

The $184.6m gap between expenditures and revenues comes because the authority oversees the funds, it cannot directly profit from them, explains a senior Kuwait government official.

“The government gives us a budget, which is what we spend on running things, but we can’t touch anything in the funds,” he says.

Each year, the government places 10 per cent of state revenues into the Future Generations Fund, which has been under management since 1976 as part of plans to offset the economic impact of any decline in oil revenues, which currently make up around 90 per cent of the state budget.

The General Reserve Fund acts as the government’s treasurer and oversees all of the government’s remaining assets and revenues, including those created by the Kuwait Fund for Future Arab Development and state oil producer Kuwait Petroleum Corporation.

In total, the KIA is estimated to manage assets worth anywhere between $250-300bn.

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