The bill arrives and nobody knows where the number came from. It is in fact a two-minute calculation you can do yourself, and every figure in it is published in a single law.
First: work out which category your home falls under.
The tariff schedule attached to Law 20 of 2016 separates sectors. A flat in an apartment block sits under the investment sector. A shop or an office sits under commercial.
One article is widely missed. Article 3 states that a Kuwaiti citizen living in investment housing is treated, for electricity and water tariff purposes, as a citizen living in private housing — provided he is not already receiving the subsidy on another home. So what decides your rate is not only the type of building; it is who you are and what else you hold.
Second: read the meter twice.
Note the reading at the start of the month and again at the end. The difference is your consumption in kilowatt-hours. Nothing else is needed.
Third: apply the bands — they stack, they do not replace each other.
For the investment sector (residential flats):
- 1 to 1,000 kWh a month: 5 fils per unit
- 1,001 to 2,000: 10 fils
- above 2,000: 15 fils
The common mistake is multiplying the whole month by the top band. Each band is charged separately. Take 2,500 kWh in a month:
- first 1,000 × 5 fils = 5,000 fils
- next 1,000 × 10 fils = 10,000 fils
- remaining 500 × 15 fils = 7,500 fils
- total = 22,500 fils, or KD 22.500
Multiply 2,500 by 15 and you get KD 37.500 — a number with no relation to your bill.
The rest of the same schedule: government and commercial pay a flat 25 fils; industrial and agricultural 10 fils; other sectors 20 fils. Industrial, commercial and government consumption carries one extra line: 3 fils for every kVARh of reactive power.
Fourth: water is billed per thousand imperial gallons.
- investment, commercial, government and other sectors: KD 4 per thousand imperial gallons a month
- industrial and agricultural: KD 2.500
- water filling stations: KD 1
A note on what is not in the schedule: private housing does not appear in either table attached to the law. The two tables cover the sectors the amendment reached — commercial, investment, government, industrial, agricultural and other.
When did it start? The law was issued on 16 May 2016, and Article 6 phased it in beginning a year after publication: commercial after one year, investment after fifteen months, government after eighteen months, industrial and agricultural after twenty-one months. The law is in force.
Source: Law 20 of 2016 on determining the electricity and water unit tariff, full text at the Kuwait laws portal — https://lawskw.com
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