Kuwaiti Delegation's Meetings at World Bank Positive

Discussions and meetings of the Kuwaiti parliamentary delegation, led by the National Assembly Speaker Marzouq Al-Ghanim, at the World Bank (WB) were positive and productive, Dean of the Executive Board and Executive Director at the WB Group Dr. Merza Hasan affirmed

In an exclusive interview to KUNA, Dr. Hasan said that the discussions focused on "the reform agenda and the economic challenges facing Kuwait due to the low oil prices.

" He added that during his talks, Al-Ghanim "valued the strategic relations between Kuwait and the World Bank." Meanwhile, Dr. Hasan noted that the WB gathered a good amount of knowledge on the Kuwaiti economy, the political environment, and the political economy.

"Now we want to translate this deep knowledge into some program to overcome some of the challenges facing the Kuwaiti economy," he added. He indicated that that the discussions also focused on "a couple of ways forward, how we can mitigate the issues and challenges facing the Kuwait economy, what kind of reform we need and how quickly should this reform be conducted," as well as "what more can the WB do for Kuwait in terms of brining the best global experience to Kuwait. Dr. Hasan affirmed that they "agreed on the way forward and agreed that Kuwait needs reform as the challenges are big and also we need to overcome other economic issues," such as the deficit in the budget, the public sector, what is the role of the private sector and "how we can create a better environment for the private sector to grow

"We need to push the growth to make it bigger and also how to integrate it with the regional agenda," he said.

He stressed the importance of the small medium-sized enterprises, saying it is "the way forward to create jobs for our youth and fulfill their hopes in order for their future career development.

" He indicated the Bank "will provide several solutions for dealing with the subsidies and other economic aspects but we will leave the selection of these options for the Kuwait side," saying "they know their environment better.

" He said that "we want to be smart in where to invest in order to have the highest developmental impact and returns, in addition to how we can involve the private sector to improve quality and reduce costs.

" He added "we are going to go (to Kuwait) with a vision and provide recommendations and see how we're going to operationalize it and then hopefully we see the best results.

" Dr. Hasan affirmed that the Bank believes that how the issues are addressed should be "homegrown coming from Kuwait and we then build it up

. " As for the delegation's meeting with the World Bank President Jim Kim, Dr. Hasan said it was "superb. It was open and frank," and that the meeting went beyond its scheduled time, which reflects "how much rapport and trust" Al-Ghanim and the President have built between them.

Al-Ghanim took part in the Global Parliamentary Conference held in Washington from April 17 to 18, organized by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the WB.

The Kuwaiti delegation, which included MPs Safa Al-Hashem, Salah Khorshid, Abdulwahab Al-Babtain and Thamer Al-Suwait also met with experts in the small and medium-sized enterprises and experts in the subsidies and energy from the WB.