According to Governmental sources, it is not easy for Kuwait to achieve a rapid shift in modifying the demographics. It states that “change is impossible and there needs to be a comprehensive study for a change in social concepts and reducing the dependence on others as it needs to activate series of decisions by increasing fees on expatriates and other legislative amendments.”
The sources also revealed that a government proposal aims to reduce the number of expats by nearly 70 percent in comparison to Kuwaitis by the year 2030, provided, the share of each nationality does not exceed a maximum of 20 percent of total number of nationals.
However, there was a high growth of expats in Kuwait marking a 1 percent increase after a year when several ministries adopted the proposal to decrease the expat numbers.
The sources said that the proposal also aimed to limit expat stay in the country between 10 and 15 years maximum that requires to be implementation in coordination with high-level and other parties in the country. However, there was no much progress in this regard.
The inflation of domestic and registered labour in the agricultural sector is one of the main reasons for the crisis, and there are more than a million workers who are registered in these sectors, constituting about 60 percent of Kuwaiti population. There are other sectors too that are not so easy to begin replacement of workers in.
Statistics reveal that employment of expats increased 1 percent from the end of 2018 to the end of 2019. The growth of expat population increased in 2019 by 125800 people from that of 2018, marking a 3.9 percent growth rate.
