‘Subsidies to holders of in-house business will be paid by May ’18’KUWAIT CITY, April 2: Rapporteur of Parliament’s committee for improving business environment MP Yousef Al-Fadhala affirmed that national labor subsidies will be paid to holders of in-house business licenses maximum by May 2018. In a press release, Al-Fadhala indicated about a request to be referred to the parliament soon for allocation of a committee to study the allotment of ten percent of the governmental contracts to small and medium enterprises.Meanwhile, the Parliament’s Budgets and Final Accounts Committee held a meeting in the presence of Minister of Commerce and Industry Khalid Al-Rawdhan during which they discussed the project of the subsidy of Public Authority of Industry for the 2018/2019 fiscal year, the final counting of the 2016/2017 fiscal year and the observations of State Audit Bureau and other financial monitoring systems.According to Rapporteur of the committee MP Adnan Abdulsamad, Minister Al- Rawdhan informed the committee about 134 vacancies that resulted from the retirement of more than 90 Kuwaiti employees. He affirmed that these vacancies will be filled soon.The minister said the consultative contracts included in the new budget draft does not include the jobs that can be filled by national employees, and that they are limited to specializations for which there is a lack of qualified Kuwaiti employees. He said the observations related to constructive projects of Public Authority of Industry have been dealt with including following up the construction of Shaddadiya Industrial City. Its infrastructure will be handed over in October 2018 and the project as a whole will be handed over in 2019.The project will help reduce the waiting list with more than 3,000 requests from applicants who are demanding for industrial plots. Abdulsamad highlighted the signing of an agreement with the National Fund for Development of Small and Medium Enterprises for coordinate with the Public Authority of Industry to distribute industrial plots.He affirmed that the committee stressed the importance of using the profits worth KD 174 million obtained by Public Authority of Industry in terms of developing the present and future industrial cities, adding that many of the state bodies do not invest their profits for enhancing their operational activities but they invest them in the form of bank deposits or securities.By Raed Yousef Al-Seyassah Staff