As Kuwait has drawn up plans to transform its economy it has sought out the services of some big guns – from the World Bank to McKinsey, the international consultants, to Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, who has been hired as a government adviser.
Like other oil-rich Gulf states, Kuwait harbours big dreams as it looks to spend tens of billions of petrodollars transforming itself into a regional trade and finance centre. For more than a year, a government body has been working on a lofty 25-year plan involving more than 1,000 projects designed to build a diversified economy capable of sustaining itself when the oil runs dry.
Yet, while its neighbours have moved ahead with a swathe of grandiose schemes, talk of “strategic visions” and megaprojects in Kuwait is met with furrowed brows and shrugs of shoulders. The reactions illustrate a despairing belief among Kuwaitis that such plans will ever materialise.
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