The Initial Public Offering for a company that will build hospitals to provide healthcare to expatriates under insurance will take place on November 1, 2014 through the Kuwait Clearing Company, a local daily reported yesterday. Minister of Commerce and Industry Dr Abdulmohsen Al-Mudej had issued a decree last month to establish the health insurance hospitals company as a Kuwaiti shareholding company with a KD230 million capital.

The IPO will be held for 50 percent of the company’s shares. Twenty four percent of the shares will be owned by the government - represented by the Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA), while 26 percent belong to Arabi Group which won the strategic investor’s stake last year.

The company’s main objective though, is to build three 50,000 square meter hospitals in different places around Kuwait to provide healthcare for expatriates covered by a government health insurance program. The mega project calls for finishing the hospitals with a capacity of 200 beds each within three to four years.

The hospitals will offer integrated medical services covered through a government-sponsored medical insurance program in which insurance companies will handle payments for medical services at the hospital.

Putting the project into effect would ultimately require increasing the annual health insurance money that expatriates pay, up to KD150 according to early estimations.

Currently, a foreigner is required to pay KD50 health insurance money for every year of their visa’s duration, in addition to entrance fees at hospitals and polyclinics, whereas the majority of health services there are offered free of charge