SCPD chief: plans to launch 82 mega projects

This year's development plan involves 82 major projects, five public shareholding businesses and 10 BOT-based enterprises, and governmental allocations for development projects for 2013-14 and 2014-15 hit KD 10.2 billion (USD 36.2 billion), a senior development official said here on Sunday. Such development projects would undoubtedly spur and stimulate the country's national economy to include wider aspects like housing, education, health, airports and harbors, in addition to oil and infrastructure projects, Secretary-General of the Supreme Council for Planning and Development (SCPD) Adel Al-Wugayan addressed the 12th conference on the role of the private sector in development and infrastructure projects held here today. The targeted development projects are part of the State's drive to diversify national income sources by means of promoting the private sector's investments and boosting the competitive edge of other sectors, Al-Wugayan said in a speech on behalf of Minister of Social Affairs and Labor and Minister of State for Planning and Development Hind Al-Sabeeh. The SCPD will deliver soon its 2015-16/2019-20 second medium-term development plan to involved state agencies and bodies, he said, adding that the SCPD has put into consideration obstacles that impeded the previous development blueprint, mainly red-tape. The government and the SCPD are seriously working together in order to realize tangible development steps while taking into account other countries' successful experiments in this regard, Al-Wugayan added. He pointed to several steps taken to encourage the private sector's development such as the privatization of existing governmental activities and the stimulation of partnership between both public and private sectors. On his part, the head of the organizing committee, Abdullatif Al-Abdulrazzaq, said the two-day conference will primarily tackle how to encourage the private sector to get involved in public development projects, chiefly infrastructure ones. But, he emphasized that the government should devise a holistic and unequivocal development blueprint based on specific development requirements targeting national interests and future goals. To outline Kuwait's future strategic vision, the government should harness efforts and utilize executive tools and mechanisms to work out an annual plan and development programs and invite the private sector to help in the fulfillment of this strategic vision, he pointed out.