ABSTRACT
During the 1950s and 1960s, as the extent of the wealth of the oil-rich states of the Gulf came to be realised, there was much discussion of the idea that some of it could be mobilised to finance the development of the poorer Arab countries, particularly Egypt, Syria and Jordan. Nothing concrete emerged, however, until Kuwait established the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development in 1962, one year after it achieved full independence, dedicated to promoting the development of the poorer Arab states. There was, of course, a clear political motive: a desire to win support, not only in the Arab world, but more widely, in the face of a threat to its newly won independence. 1 In addition to the establishment of the Kuwait Fund, the Kuwait government had initiated some years prior to independence a programme of assistance to poorer states in the Gulf and the ‘South’: the Trucial States, Oman, Bahrain and the two Yemens. The General Board for the South and the Arabian Gulf was subsequently established in 1965 to administer that programme. These activities were on a small scale, however; in the first ten years of its operations commitments by the Kuwait Fund averaged $26 million a year and expenditure net of loan repayments a little over $14 million. Total expenditure by the General Board between 1966 and 1970 amounted to a little over $14 million. 2
