In the early years of the century most of these annual trade reports were edited and made available to the general public in the form of parliamentary papers. Certain issues, however, were classified as confidential and were not made available to the public even in summary form, for example the pre-World War I Kuwait reports. Complete sets such as this are, therefore, extremely rare and form an essential research tool for the study of the economic and social development of the Gulf in the twentieth century. There are two volumes each for: Bahrain, Kuwait, Muscat, and Bushire.