Kuwait plans to build highways costing about KD1.7bn ($6.2bn) over the next three and a half years as it seeks to become a commercial and financial hub in the region.“Ministry of Public Works is currently designing highways that will be tendered in the coming three and a half years, one after the other, for a cost of KD1.7bn and a total length of 550km,” Minister of Public Works Fadhel Safar said in a telephone interview Wednesday in Kuwait City.Parliament in February 2010 approved a KD30.8bn, four-year development plan that aims to lure international investors and includes projects to increase oil and gas production and construction of a railway network, cities and a port on Boubyan Island. In October last year, the state’s Central Tenders Committee said a group led by Hyundai Engineering & Construction Co. made the lowest bid to design, build, operate and maintain a bridge for KD738.8m ($2.6bn).Jaber Al-Ahmad bridge, one of the country’s biggest infrastructure projects, will link the mainland to Subbiya in the north. The contract then got “dragged into political conflicts” vice chairman Raad al-Abdullah of Combined Group Contracting Co, which has a stake 20 percent stake in the bid, said on June 9.The economy of Kuwait, which holds the world’s fifth- largest oil reserves, suffers from a “number of structural imbalances” that require the “correction” of the state’s budget position and measures to promote the private sector’s contribution to growth, the state’s ruler Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah said on August 15, according to state run news agency KUNA.Kuwait was the fourth-biggest producer, along with the UAE, in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries in July. The country produced 2.52 million barrels of oil a day on average. From / Arabian Business news