Kuwait Economy and Politics

When you go through the Kuwait Travel Guide, you will find that Kuwait is highly advanced economically. A look at the Kuwait Economy and Politics shows us that economically Kuwait can be regarded as one of the richest countries of the world. This growth in Kuwait's Economy is mostly attributed to the rich oil reserve of the country. Kuwait owns about 8% of world's total oil reserve. Kuwait Economy and Politics further shows that over time Kuwait has used oil earnings to make huge foreign investments. However Kuwait's Economy suffered a major blow during Iraqi invasion but Kuwait overcame that problem by mid 1990s and again began its journey on the way of prosperity. When we look at the figures of Kuwait Economy and Politics then we find that GDP of Kuwait in 2004 was $55.7 billion. The government owns the oil industry which can be regarded as the backbone of Kuwait Economy and Politics and it covers almost 75% of GDP. The export of oil depends on the domestic need of Kuwait. However, there are other factors also regulating export of petroleum by Kuwait, which are international demand and prices and production quotas which is fixed by OPEC. Kuwait has a huge labor force working mostly in the oil industry but only about one-quarter of the Kuwaiti citizens are members of this work force.
A major factor that you can see in the Economy and Politics of Kuwait is that though Kuwaiti government is desperately trying to encourage local agriculture and industry, still Kuwait has to import lots of products. It can be said almost every daily item including a wide range of food products are imported from other countries. The countries where Kuwait exports its products are Japan, USA, South Korea and Singapore and the main countries from where its imports the products are USA, Germany, UK and Japan.

Politics of Kuwait also gives us a fair idea about the political situation in Kuwait. Kuwait's Politics is predominantly a picture of constitutional monarchy. The constitution governing Kuwait became operational from 1962. This constitution established a National Assembly and the political power are shared among the emir and the National Assembly. The history of Kuwaiti politics shows that the emir suspended the constitution and the parliament twice, for the first time from 1976 to 1980 and the next time from 1986 to 1992. But traces of parliamentary democracy always persisted side by side with the emir's control. In 1990, the emir wanted to create a titular national council replacing the parliament. The opposition immediately boycotted election and before the issue was resolved Iraqi invasion took place. From that time the National Assembly was restored in Kuwait and it is still operational.