Assembly panel presses govt over multibillion-dinar profits

Assembly panel presses govt over multibillion-dinar profits

By B Izzak

KUWAIT: The National Assembly's budgets committee yesterday pressed government agencies, including Kuwait Petroleum Corp, to transfer to government coffers billions of dinars of profits they had "illegally“ retained. Head of the committee MP Bader Al-Mulla said the panel meeting was supposed to be attended by the prime minister and the ministers of finance and oil, but they apologized at the last minute and sent senior officials instead.

Mulla said the committee found that only 21 percent of profits posted by several state agencies had been transferred to state coffers, while 79 percent of the multibillion-dinar sums had been retained by the agencies in violation of the law. He said the main culprit is KPC, which has transferred just 19 percent of its profits, and although a previous agreement had been made to pay the sums in instalments, KPC has failed to fulfil its promises.

Mulla said the committee found that KPC alone has failed to transfer close to KD 6 billion since 2014. He added that other agencies have agreed to transfer their profits to the government before the end of the current fiscal year. The committee called the meeting to explore ways to provide funds to the cash-strapped general