The total salaries paid to workers of the public sector and included in the budget witnessed a jump of KD 4 billion in the last ten years from the 2009/2010 fiscal year to the 2018/2019 fiscal year. It has increased from KD 3.2 billion to KD 7.2 billion, with an annual growth rate of 9.5 percent, thus bringing the total salaries paid to ministries and government departments in the past ten years to about KD 52 billion, reports Al-Anba daily.

In an exclusive study prepared by the daily regarding the consumption spending of citizens and residents in Kuwait and overseas during the period from 2010 to 2020, and based on the consumption statistics in the country and the data of the Central Bank of Kuwait, it appears that high salaries in the government and private sectors and the strong growth of personal facilities provided by Kuwaiti banks are the two main drivers of increased consumer spending by citizens and residents both inside and outside Kuwait. According to the data, the spending of citizens and residents during the past ten years amounted to about KD 88 billion through transactions of point-of-sale (POS) devices inside and outside Kuwait, with a compound annual growth rate of nine percent./KT