Marcopolis presents the Bahrain Report focused on the investments, doing business, economy and other topics featuring interviews with key executives and government officials. The sectors under review are industry, telecom, banking sector, ICT, investments and more.
What are the biggest priorities for domestic reform, in other words what are your main priorities (where would you like to see Bahrain) ?
Vision 2030 aspires to diversify and grow the economy to achieve sustainable economic development, and a doubling of the household disposable income by 2030.
The National Economic Strategy (NES) is, if you will, a roadmap to achieving this goal, it is focused on different initiatives concentrated on Education and Training, Economics, Health, and Society and under the three guiding principles of Sustainability, Competitiveness and Fairness, the aim being to transform Bahrain into a meritocracy, driven by the private sector, in which hard work reaps rewards.
I would say that in summary the main priority is to encourage new investment in order to grow employment opportunities, and to ensure that our labor force is educated and trained, in particular for those industries and services which are the target of our economic policy . In order to achieve this one critical area of importance is to enhance our existing hard and soft infrastructures, improve our attractiveness to both foreign and domestic investors, and encourage and promote existing business to achieve higher levels of productivity.
At the Ministry of Industry and Commerce (MOIC), on the industrial front, we are attempting to create higher valued added industry, which will support the provision of new higher paid employment, and at the same time take account of our relatively short supply of land, water and energy.
Bahrain is focused on moving to a knowledge base, and to achieve this by clustering industries around a number of core competencies and strategic advantages. At the Ministry our job is to try to guide industry in the right direction through a number of policy initiatives, and by establishing the right level of supporting infrastructure.
The new Bahrain International Investment Park (BIIP), within the newly formed Salman Industrial City, is one such project which the Ministry has developed to provide some 640 hectares of serviced land, providing excellent logistics, and designed to maximize clustering and the cross-fertilization of industry.
We have a number of other projects in the pipe line which are geared at maximizing the impact of our new industrial policy and providing new value propositions for both domestic and foreign investors. However maximizing the availability of industrial land is a policy priority, as is a focus on the development of small and medium sized enterprises.
As regards trade policy, whilst expanding regional integration and trade is a policy objective, we are looking towards the greater Middle East, MENA region as a market for Bahrain based businesses, and projecting the Kingdom primarily as a base for this wider market.
We also look beyond the Middle East, by means of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) which we have with the United States, to attracting investment in Bahrain to take advantage of the potential which the FTA has for Bahrain businesses in terms of the vast U.S market. I also believe that the proposed GCC FTA with the Japan and with the EU, will offer us significant benefits as a regional business centre and as a regional base for Japanese and European businesses.
On the commercial, legal and regulatory front, we are embarked on developing a new suite of commercial laws, as well a new on-line application and registration system to improve the incorporation process.
Other initiatives in the commercial area, which support the attraction of inward investment and the promotion of the our economy, include the new raft of Intellectual Property laws; development of local and regional standards and infrastructure; providing support for sme’s to develop, which in turn then provides foreign investors with a growing number of potential local partners, and in a more general sense we are working very hard to ensure that the local market remains as a clean, transparent and growing market, by putting anti-money laundering and the development of good corporate governance high on our agenda.
The Ministry, together with Mumtalakat Holding Co., and the private sector, are launching the development of the Exhibition & Conference City, and to stress the importance of this sector, which is overseen by MOIC, due to the major position which this sector holds for Bahrain.
As the provider of the industrial and commercial infrastructure, which enables businesses to enter and exit the market; as the authority responsible for Industrial Policy, Trade Policy, Standards & Metrology; Industrial Property, eCommerce, Exhibitions and Conventions, and providing gem Testing facilities, the Ministry of Industry and Commerce (MOIC) , is there to ensure that any impediments that effect the efficient functioning of the market and the development of the private sector are eliminated or minimized , to enable the Vision growth aspirations to be achieved, and to provide all of the necessary facilities, including the provision of industrial land, that is required for Bahrain to expand its manufacturing capability.