Kuwait posts 25 billion dollar surplus in first nine months

* username: rupertbu

OPEC member Kuwait posted a preliminary budget surplus of 25.2 billion dollars in the first nine months of the current fiscal year on higher oil income, the finance ministry said on Wednesday.

The ministry said on its website that revenues until the end of December reached 45 billion dollars, 60 percent above the 28.1 billion dollars projected for the whole 2009-2010 fiscal year, which ends on March 31.

That income is, however, far below the 64.4 billion dollars earned in the first nine months of the previous fiscal year when oil prices shot above 147 dollars a barrel.

Spending during the nine months was 19.8 billion dollars, just 46.9 percent of projected spending for the whole year of 42.1 billion dollars, the ministry figures showed.

The huge surplus is expected to be lower at the end of the fiscal year due to end-of-year accounting adjustments when pledged expenditure not included so far will be added to the closing statements.

Oil income up to the end of December came to 42.4 billion dollars or 75.9 percent above budget projections for the whole year of 24.1 billion dollars. Oil revenues constituted 94.3 percent of total income.

The figure is far below the 61 billion dollars of oil income in the same period of the previous fiscal year.

Kuwait, the fourth largest OPEC producer, has projected a deficit of 13.8 billion dollars for the current fiscal year after calculating oil income at a conservative price of 35 dollars a barrel.

Oil prices have ranged between 70 and 80 dollars for most of the year.

Kuwait has projected shortfalls in the past 10 fiscal years but eventually ended with a massive surplus in all of them.

The Gulf state finished last fiscal year with a surplus of 9.6 billion dollars despite making a one-off payment of 19 billion dollars to the state pension fund.

This would be Kuwait's 11th straight year of budget surplus. In the past 10 years, it has accumulated around 123 billion dollars of budget surplus, based on available official data.

The emirate has been investing its savings abroad through the Kuwait Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund whose assets are estimated at around 230 billion dollars.

Kuwait says it sits on 10 percent of global crude reserves and pumps around 2.2 million barrels per day. It has a citizen population of 1.1 million, and 2.34 million foreign residents.END