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KAC losses $241m due to accounting standards change

KUWAIT: Kuwait Airways Corp (KAC) fell back deep into the red in the 1998/99 fiscal year, showing a loss of 73.86 million dinars ($241 million) mainly due to a change in accounting standards, officials said on Sunday.

"The company is preparing an explanatory statement and it will be issued this week," one official told Reuters after actual figures for the year to end-June 1999 were presented to parliament and published in local newspapers on Sunday.

The actual figures, which still require approval by an elected parliament that has often criticised the national flag carrier, show KAC cutting the shortfall in 1998/99 to 10.3 million dinars from 28.2 million dinars the previous year.

But the total loss soared due to a new method of accounting.

The firm, which has been rebuilding following devastation and huge losses during the seven-month Iraqi occupation of Kuwait in 1990-91, is earmarked for privatisation. The state has taken some of the first legal steps towards eventually selling off part of the carrier.

Total revenue for the year came in at 196.27 million dinars while actual spending was 270 million dinars, compared with a forecast 220.729 million dinars and 220.728 million respectively.

KAC's 1999/2000 financial statement projects a net profit of 493,045 dinars. It hopes to earn 220.387 million dinars in revenue in the current fiscal year.

The firm, which employes some 5,700 people, has a fleet of 15 Airbus aircraft and two Boeing 777s which were all bought after the 1991 Gulf War forced Iraqi troops out of Kuwait. KAC had earlier said it lost 86 percent of its assets during the crisis.

According to official actual figures already approved by parliament, KAC lost 11 million dinars in 1996/97 and 31.17 million dinars the year before that.-Reuters