Billions in the bank, yet Kuwait is squeezed for cash

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When Kuwait’s prime minister returns to office in the coming weeks, he faces an apparent paradox: the Gulf state with a $550bn sovereign wealth fund is running short on cash to pay ballooning public sector salaries.

Oil accounts for 90 per cent of its revenue, but slumping prices have hit the western ally’s income hard, putting its forecast deficit close to 40 per cent of GDP, higher than it was in the 1990s,…