Perhaps one of the earliest strategies adopted to achieve the aims of this phase appeared in the form of a broad wave of retirement, intended to improve the efficiency of the public sector through reforming the government wage bill, particularly by bringing new blood into the workforce of state institutions. This produced an unusual movement from the category of "insured contributors" to that of "pensioners." Meanwhile, and as a consequence of what the national identity file has witnessed, the base of insured contributors contracted, while cash assets declined as the settlement process was completed.

The sustainability of social pension funds rests on maintaining a sound balance between "contributions," meaning the revenues collected from insured contributors, and "pensions," meaning the expenditures paid to pensioners. Given the nature of population growth and the expansion of the contributor base, while taking other actuarial factors into account, the system remains on a sound course when the rate of revenue growth exceeds that of expenditure growth. Whenever this balance is disturbed, for whatever reason, investment tools seek to restore the balance between the two. The actuarial reflection of such an imbalance is measured by the widening gap between a fund’s assets and its future liabilities: the wider the gap, the weaker the balance; the narrower it becomes, the stronger that balance grows.

It is worth noting that the years preceding the present phase witnessed repeated disturbances in the mechanisms that maintained this balance, for various reasons whose differing logic was evident. Parliamentary pressures and overlapping policies caused the actuarial deficit to draw nearer at times, then recede at others, and so the cycle continued. Eventually, specialists came to believe that the sustainability of the funds of Kuwait's Public Institution for Social Security could not be secured without relying first on government support, then on legislative or regulatory amendments — or both — affecting contributions and pensions, while conventional investment tools came last among the pillars supporting that sustainability.

Returning now to the requirements of the present phase, it must be acknowledged that the Public Institution for Social Security is an inseparable part of the government structure, not only in its legal character, but also through its participation in the costs and returns of the decisions of that structure, in integration with the rest of the state’s institutions.

Yes, we understand that reforming the government wage bill may ease the burden of public expenditure in one area. We also understand that, in parallel, it has taken the form of a transfer resembling an accounting shift, appearing at the Public Institution for Social Security as lower revenues and higher expenditures. We further understand that this transfer carries returns in terms of productive efficiency, which may eventually lead to a more firmly balanced position for the institution in particular, and for government productivity in general.

Yet the institution’s journey, and the experience accumulated since its law was enacted, place before us a clear need to ensure its ability to absorb the consequences of the costs and returns of the state decisions in which it participates, while at the same time making the institution itself the first and final pillar of the sustainability of its pension funds.

Perhaps, then, it is time to consider renewing its law in a manner that keeps pace with both the age and its thinking: a law dynamic in its approach, rich in automatic mechanisms concerned with maintaining balance, and open to changing circumstances. Such prudent dynamism would preserve its wisdom for the future in the face of fluctuations that, in its absence, may call for rigid and repeated legislative amendments — amendments that require sound judgment each time, while such judgment may not always be present at precisely the moment it is needed, just as we witnessed in some of what preceded the present phase.

May God ordain for this nation a course of sound judgment.