Social Slave

According to AlRai newspaper, the number of Kuwaitis could drop to 19% percent of Kuwait’s population if the government didn’t control the flow of expat workers. Apparently around 188,000 workers entered Kuwait in the past 18 months in spite of the government’s regulations to limit the access of expat workers in Kuwait.

That’s like 1 in how many?

[Source]

According to the research carried out by the National Bonds Corp in Dubai, the National Bonds GCC Savings Index shows that the Gulf states are facing a “crisis” over the lack of savings culture among the citizens. This is mainly because of a lack of financial education and awareness about the importance of savings.

Here are the results for Kuwait:

• 11% of Kuwait citizens believe their savings are sufficient to secure their future
• 46% said they had failed to meet their savings goals with zero respondents saving more than expected
• More than 56% said the cost of food had hindered their saving plans
• 26% of respondents saved less than 10% of their monthly salary with 1% saving 70% of their monthly wage.
• The biggest motivators among Kuwaiti citizens for saving included the purchase of gold, annual holidays, medical expenses and buying land.

This is not just the case for the citizens, the Gulf expatriates are in the same boat.

Read the full article [Here] and [Here]

According to a new index devised by Save the Children, Kuwait ranks 47 out of 161 countries as one of the best countries for child health care. The Health Worker Index measures the reach of health workers around the world and factors in the proportion of children who receive regular vaccinations and mothers who have access to life-saving emergency care at birth. The World Health Organization says a minimum of 23 health workers are needed for every 10,000 people in order to deliver essential maternal and child health services.

Below are the ranks for the GCC countries:
Qatar – 20
Kuwait – 47
Oman – 54
Bahrain – 59
UAE – 60
Saudi Arabia – 73

[Link]

Here are some interesting graphic details of the most popular cars by country. To my surprise Toyota Camry is the top most selling car in Kuwait.

See the enlarged image [Here].

According to the Internet World Stats, there are 822,640 Facebook users in Kuwait as of June 30, 2011 which is almost 75% of Kuwait’s population and about 5% of the total number of Facebook users in the Arab countries.

Top five Middle East countries with highest Facebook usage:

Saudi Arabia – 4,034,740
UAE – 2,340,880
Jordan – 1,675,780
Lebanon – 1,201,820
Iraq – 860,400

[Source]

According to a recent seminar on ‘Living with Cancer’ organized by Kuwait’s Business and Professional Women’s Club, the rate of deaths from breast cancer among women in Kuwait is considered the world’s highest and it is mainly because of a lack of awareness and delay in detection of the disease.

The chart above shows the percentage of women with breast cancer in different age groups, which is a lot. It is very important for all women aged 20 and over to perform regular BSE checkups and have annual screening which would help reduce deaths and increase the chances of recovery by 90% if the cancer is detected early.

[Source]

WPP’s Brandz released their sixth annual report on the Top 100 global brands for 2011. Guess who made it to the top? Apple with its 84% increase in value over the past year, and it pushed down Google that had been on the top spot from the last four years.

The BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands study conducted by Millward Brown Optimor identifies and ranks the world’s most valuable 100 brands by their dollar value based on financial data combined with consumer measures of brand equity. The raw data for the BrandZ study is collected annually by interviewing consumers and professionals and asking them to evaluate brands in a competitive context from a category they actually shop in.

Here are the top 10 Most Valuable Global Brands for 2011:

These are some of the top brands of different sectors:

• Apparel – Nike
• Beer – Budweiser
• Car – Toyota
• Fast Food – McDonald’s
• Luxury – Louis Vuitton
• Personal Care – Gillette
• Retail – Amazon
• Soft Drink – Coca-Cola
• Technology – Apple
• Telecom – at&t

Their flash-based interactive eReport is pretty neat. Check out the full report for the top brands based on regions and sectors [Here]