Kuwait accounts for about 10% of the world’s oil reserves and has benefitted from recent high oil prices, as well as political stability and economic growth. Yet the country plans to diversify its economy away from the oil sector to include infrastructure, tourism and construction. Still, the construction sector contributes only 6% to the nation’s economy, while the oil sector accounts for 55% of GDP, 95% of expatriate revenues and 80% of government income, according to the Oxford Business Group (OBG). The country is far behind its neighboring economies in terms of growth in the property market, mainly due to the lack of transparency on real estate information, lack of trading savy among investors, lack of regulations, restriction of foreign ownership and scarcity of lending facilities. According to the National Bank of Kuwait (NBK), 2008 has not been very prosperous as the first nine months of the year witnessed a
