China is building Kuwait’s Mubarak Al Kabeer Port — what’s next? Kuwait has finalized a KWD 1.2 bn (USD 4 bn) contract with China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) to complete the long-stalled first phase of the Mubarak Al Kabeer Port.

Why it matters

This isn’t simply a project milestone — it is yet another strong sign that Kuwait has finally broken the decade-long political gridlock that paralyzed its infrastructure. For over a generation, Kuwait’s representative politics — the most active in the Gulf — was synonymous with development delays. By suspending parliament in May 2024 and bypassing the legislative process to raise the country’s debt ceiling via the KWD 30 bn debt law, Kuwait is now able to fund new mega projects that will be critical for its race to diversify its economy away from oil like its Gulf peers.

This mobilization also signals that Kuwait is finally ready to compete for the northern Gulf trade corridor —a space currently being captured by the aggressive Iraq Development Road projects — featuring a spate of intermodal logistics projects that are now in the advanced construction stage, including the Grand Faw Port just 2 km away from Kuwait’s Mubarak Al Kabeer.

Zero-Sum Logistics: The Northern Gulf may not be big enough for two mega-hubs. Kuwait is banking on the Gulf Railway to connect its port directly to the Saudi heartland, betting that a link to Riyadh will be more attractive to global shippers than Iraq’s overland route through Turkey.

But Enterprise, why does it have to be a zero-sum game? Kuwait’s Mubarak Al Kabeer and Iraq’s Grand Faw ports are situated in Khor Abdullah, a 10 km-wide waterway, where the maritime jurisdiction is unclear. Khor Abdullah is Iraq’s only direct gateway to the Gulf, facilitating the majority of its oil exports and imports. The waterway’s status is also now in limbo after Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court annulled a 2013 maritime demarcation pact with Kuwait in 2023.

Background

Mubarak Al Kabeer is located on Bubiyan Island in northern Kuwait and is part of the Northern Economic Zone, both of which are linked to the country’s Silk City (Madinat Al Hareer) — a megaproject under development. The China-backed goliath project will encompass 250 sq km and is planned to include an international airport and a dutyfree trade zone.

GCC rail connectivity is also in the works: Mubarak Al Kabeer Port will connect to a 111 kmrailway network linking the port to a central hub in Kuwait City’s Shadadiya, where a 2 mn sqm station will operate. This creates a land bridge, allowing cargo arriving at the new deep-water port to be offloaded and transported by rail toward the southern borders and the rest of the Gulf via the Gulf Railway Project.

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