Kuwait City, May 03: Two Arabic-language Gulf dailies, Kuwait’s Awan and Bahrain’s Al-Waqt, announced on Monday that they are closing due to economic difficulties.
Awan’s editor Mohammed al-Rumeihi said in a front-page article that the newspaper was closing due to “extremely harsh economic reasons,” without elaborating.
The daily, which published its last edition on Monday, is closing after about 30 months of publication.
Kuwait, which will still have 14 Arabic and three English-language newspapers, besides dozens of other publications, saw another daily close more than a year ago due to the impact of the global financial crisis.
Assawt was being financed by Investment Dar, a Kuwaiti Islamic investment firm that was severely affected by the economic downturn.
In Bahrain, Al-Waqt daily attributed its closure to the fact that it was unable to increase its income, or “find a strategic partner or … buyer.”
“It seems that no one in this country wants a national, independent and professional newspaper to continue,” Al-Waqt said in a statement.
The publication, which released its first issue in March 2006, will close on Tuesday, leaving Bahrain with six Arabic and two English-language newspapers.
From the beginning, Al-Waqt suffered financial difficulties, which were later aggravated by the financial crisis that impacted an already-limited advertising market in the small Gulf state.
In 2007, the paper won the Arab Journalism Award for political investigative reports and later in 2008 won the Arab Journalism Award for its coverage of environmental news.
–Agencies