A planned government fund to buy into the Kuwaiti bourse to stop months of declines in the wake of the global financial crisis will have a 'big' volume, the finance minister said.

The government asked the country's sovereign wealth fund earlier this month to set up the fund after the Kuwaiti bourse  shed more than 30 percent this year.

'We haven't decided on the capital (of the fund) yet...It will be big', Mustafa Al-Shamali told Al-Watan daily, reiterating that the fund would start buying into the bourse before an Islamic holiday next week.

A government source told Reuters earlier this month the proposed fund would be worth at least 1 billion dinars ($3.91 million).

Separately, Al-Watan said the cabinet, which meets on Monday, would approve the establishment of the fund, part of efforts to soften the impact of the credit crunch after the OPEC producer had to save its fifth-largest lender Gulf Bank.

A task group headed by Central Bank Governor Sheikh Salem Abdul-Aziz Al-Sabah to discuss plans rescue investment firms hit by a global crisis would also meet on Monday, the paper said in an unsourced report. - Reuters