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Kuwait City: Kuwait's sovereign wealth fund wants to boost investments across asset classes in Asia with a focus on Japan, China and India, while skipping any future agency debt of US mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the country's finance minister said.
The Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) is looking at stocks, bonds and real estate in Japan, and all sectors in India and China, Mustafa Al Shamali said.
"China, India and Asia in general are new markets, growing and promising markets for the future, and investment returns are good there," he said, speaking to reporters after meeting his Japanese counterpart to discuss boosting economic ties.
"We were looking purely into financial and investment sectors and many investments went to equities and bonds. Now we are thinking in bigger sectors, maybe we can go to real estate," he said when asked about investments specifically in Japan.
"We are thinking to increase investments in Japan... The volume of our investments in Japan until now is good ... (but) it should be much more than that," he said, declining to say how much Kuwait has invested so far in Japan.
He also said KIA was considering investments in several sectors in China and India. "All sectors, we are not looking into a specific sector... all areas are open," he said.
Gulf Arab states and companies, buoyed by record oil prices, spent about $60 billion on foreign assets last year, almost double the previous two years combined.
The Financial Times reported last week that some of the world's largest sovereign wealth funds were seeking to scale back their exposure to the dollar in a sign of global concern about the currency.
The Financial Times said a large sovereign fund in the Gulf had cut its dollar-denominated holdings from more than 80 per cent a year ago to less than 60 per cent, but gave no source.
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