Figures posted on the finance ministry website show that at the end of last November, the eighth month of Kuwait's 2003/2004 fiscal year, the emirate had already made 1.965 billion dinars (6.55 billion dollars) in surplus.
If maintained, the figure would be the largest surplus in Kuwait's history followed by 1.777 billion dinars (5.93 billion dollars) posted in 2000/2001, which was shortened by three months to change the start of the fiscal year.
The excess was made mainly on the back of a huge increase in oil revenues and a sharp drop in spending, and is in spite of a projected budget deficit of 2.35 billion dinars (7.85 billion dollars).
The emirate posted 4.54 billion dinars (15.13 billion dollars) in oil revenues in the first eight months of the year which runs from April 1, 2003 to March 31, 2004.
The sum is larger than budget projections for oil income of 2.97 billion dinars (9.9 billion dollars) and even higher than total revenues for the whole year, projected at 3.555 billion dinars (11.85 billion dollars).
Kuwait had calculated its oil revenues at a conservative price of 15 dollars a barrel at a daily output of around two million barrels. Average price for Kuwaiti oil has topped 25 dollars a barrel for most of the current fiscal year.
Unofficial reports have also indicated that the emirate, which has a production capacity of 2.5 million barrels a day, has been producing over its Opec quota.
About 90 percent of Kuwait's income comes from oil.
Non-oil revenues are also higher than projections, hitting 515.3 million dinars (1.72 billion dollars) at the end of November against an estimated 585 million dinars (1.95 billion dollars) for the whole year.
Local reports have predicted that total revenues at the end of the year would top the six-billion-dinar (20-billion-dollar) mark, almost twice the budget projection.
Expenditures for the year were estimated at 5.909 billion dinars (19.7 billion dollars), but actual spending into two-thirds of the year was 2.57 billion dinars (8.6 billion dollars). Economists, however, warn that spending is normally low for most of the fiscal year, but dramatically picks up in the last quarter with most ministries trying to spend their allocated budget.
A surplus at the end of the current year would mean that Kuwait has boasted a budget in the black for the fifth year running, following a decade of sustained heavy losses.
Between 1990 and 1999, the emirate incurred accumulated deficits of 21.1 billion dinars (70 billion dollars) and managed a surplus of 63.2 million dinars (210.1 million dollars) only in 1996/97 fiscal year.
More than 61 percent of the deficits however came in the first two years of the last decade to finance the US-led Gulf War to liberate Kuwait from seven months of Iraqi occupation.
Kuwait also lost oil revenues for most of those two years because of the Iraqi occupation and to repair more than 700 oil wells destroyed by retreating Iraqi troops.