Kuwait is reviewing more than 900 laws to attract investment

Kuwait has embarked on a review of more than 900 laws as part of an effort to modernise its investment climate. The number is the story. Rather than amending a handful of statutes and calling the job done, Kuwait has taken the whole commercial statute book as the unit of work — which is the more thorough approach and the slower one. Kuwait was an early Gulf financial centre. It had a stock exchange before most of its neighbours, a sophisticated merchant class, and one of the world's oldest sovereign wealth funds, the Kuwait Investment Authority, established in 1953. Its commercial law was written around that economy. Company formation, foreign ownership, bankruptcy treatment, employment mobility and the mechanics of moving capital were all framed for trading and industrial businesses rather than for venture-backed technology companies. None of those provisions is decisive on its own. Together they shape a founder's choice between incorporating in Kuwait and incorporating in a financial free zone while serving Kuwaiti customers — and that choice is what a review of this scope is aimed at changing. Reviewing 900 laws is not the same as changing them, and legislative programmes of this size are typically delivered in tranches over several years. The provisions that matter most for technology investment are a small subset: foreign ownership limits, the enforceability of shareholder agreements, treatment of employee equity, insolvency, and how quickly a company can be formed and dissolved. Those five are the ones to watch as the tranches land, because they are what an investor's counsel reads before a term sheet is signed. Kuwait scored 41 out of 100 on digital readiness in the 2026 International Digital Competitiveness Assessment, alongside Oman on 47, Saudi Arabia on 44 and Bahrain on 35 — mid-table in a region that is moving quickly. Each of its neighbours has found a specific mechanism. Bahrain grew its ecosystem value 759% in five years on regulatory speed. Qatar has entered the Middle East and Africa top ten by directing state procurement toward startups. Oman has built a national technical workforce, reaching 69% Omanisation in technical IT roles. Kuwait's legal review is the groundwork those mechanisms sit on. Getting the statute book into shape is what makes a procurement programme or a licensing regime enforceable once it is designed, and it is the part that has to come first.