Kuwait Times

Published Date: May 06, 2009

KUWAIT: The average monthly expenditure of a Kuwaiti family is about KD1600 or 72.5 percent of the total monthly income which tops KD2200, revealed a set of statistics issued yesterday by the nation's Central Statistics Administration (CSA). On the other hand a Kuwaiti family's monthly savings stand at KD607, or 27.5 percent of the total family monthly earnings, indicated CSA, considering that average amount to be high. These statistics are the results of a survey of 768 Kuwaiti families, concluded over a
period of six months, from Oct 2007 to March 2008.

The average expenditure and savings of a Kuwaiti family have been found to rate high when compared with a similar family in the industrial countries or GCC states, noted CSA, attributing that high rate to increases in total family income and the disparate benefits that family gets from government subsidies of basic daily needs including food, health, education, housing, electric power and water. By contrast the average monthly expenditure of an expatriate's family in Kuwait is about KD731 and its savings i
s KD99, keeping in mind that the number of expatriate families is estimated to be 203,150 in the year 2008. Based on this information the total or aggregate expenditure of Kuwaiti and expatriate families in 2008 came to KD 4.5 billion.

For Kuwaiti families, the most money spent in a month was on food and tobacco products (18.5 percent of monthly income), followed by money spent on jewelry and electronic merchandize ( 13.1 percent), furniture (14.5 percent), clothing (11 percent), entertainment (9.1 percent), and transportation (8.8 percent). Overall, CSA statistics concluded that the pattern of consumption was fundamentally similar between Kuwaiti and expatriate families, except in spending on housing and utilities (ie water and electric
power). - Kuna