Building materials’ market witnesses hike in prices

KUWAIT CITY, Oct 22: According to real estate sources, the market for selling building materials is currently witnessing a noticeable rise in prices due to the repercussions of the COVID-19 crisis as well as the government’s implementation of the decisions to impose customs duties on products from China, India and Iran in order to confront the dumping policy from those countries, reports Al-Qabas daily.

Despite the high prices and other impacts, most of the large contracting companies continue to buy building materials. However, due to the steady rise in prices, most of the contracting companies are suffering and may be forced to buy substandard and cheap building materials from other countries. This will affect the quality of construction and reinforce the corruption component in the construction markets.

The sources emphasized that there is a case of severe confusion noticed in the government’s position regarding the implementation of the decisions to impose dumping duties issued on April 20, 2020 and October 5, 2020, as it has become clear that there are some who support, oppose or are adversely affected by the application of these decisions.

They explained that those decisions are in light of the existence of a study that clarifies all the negative and positive aspects that will affect the local market, the national economy and the Gulf market.

The results of that study are as follows –
Stopping work by imposing customs duties to combat dumping of the local market will negatively affect national products, the national workforce and the national companies that produce locally-manufactured goods of similar or sometimes higher quality.
Cases and compensation that will be brought against the concerned government agencies responsible for the failure to implement international decisions.
Insulting Kuwait’s reputation before the Gulf Cooperation Council and other countries around the world for lack of credibility in implementing the signed decisions.
An explicit waste of public money and the imposed fees which are supposed to devolve into the state treasury.

The sources indicated that the impact on the market and domestic consumption of building materials is due to the strong repercussions of the COVID-19 crisis, which has majorly affected the volume of revenues, which along with the weak oil revenues have caused a deficit in the budget. This had a clear impact on the options of the government in terms of reconsidering future spending and considering increasing the non-oil revenues.

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