Bahrain’s Economic Development Board (EDB), which is a focused investment promotion agency, is aiming at a $500-million FDI inflow into the island nation through this institution in the next few years, its Chief Executive Khalid Al Rumaihi has said.

In an interview to a group of visiting journalists to Bahrain, Rumaihi said the EDB plans to reach out to investors in five sectors — financial services, logistics, tourism, manufacturing and ICT.

In 2016, the estimated FDI flows into Bahrain through EDB was $281 million, almost double the $140 million in 2015. For the current year, the EDB is eyeing FDI flow of “north of $300 million”.

Non-oil sectors

The EDB was set up in 2000 as a quasi-government agency in charge of economic strategy, investment attraction and execution of reforms in association with the government.

“We now believe we have competitive positioning and good value proposition in these five identified sectors that would allow us to reach the kind of volumes we are aspiring for ($500 million). You can see that four of the five identified sectors are services,” he noted.

Given that Bahrain is in a traditional sense no longer an oil-dominated economy (non-oil sectors account for 80 per cent of its GDP), Rumaihi said Bahrain’s economy will benefit more from services than goods.

“We have created business development teams for these identified sectors. They will reach out to specific foreign companies and help them in their whole journey of investing in Bahrain. In 2016, as many as 40 foreign companies came and invested in Bahrain,” he added.

At the same time, Rumaihi also said that EDB is open to help investors beyond the identified five sectors to invest in Bahrain.

“So tomorrow if somebody comes to us and says they want to set up an university, we will gladly help them do so. For other sectors like healthcare, education and professional services, we will react and would be keen to be the first port of call and assist,” he added.

He further said that for Bahrain, the economic strategy should be to position the island country as an effective gateway to the Gulf region and potentially use it as a hub beyond the region.

Tourism potential

Rumaihi sees huge potential for tourism development, particularly medical tourism. Against its population of 1.3 million, the number of annual tourists exceeds 12.5 million. As many as 7-8 million come through the Saudi border, he said.

(The writer was recently in Bahrain at the invitation of its Economic Development Board).

Related Topics