Bahrain

Bahrain announces major new economic growth and fiscal balance plan

The Kingdom of Bahrain today announced a new national economic growth and fiscal balance plan.  The multi-year plan represents one of Bahrain’s largest economic reform programmes, with the aim of enhancing the economy’s long-term competitiveness and supporting the post-COVID 19 recoveries.

The new five-pillar plan, which aligns with Bahrain’s Economic Vision 2030 and the Kingdom’s intention to achieve net-zero by 2060, includes:

1.     A new Labour Market Reform Plan: A long-term National Labour Market Strategy, a review of labour fees, and a new Tamkeen Strategy to continue upskilling the Bahraini workforce. The program aims to create 20,000 Bahraini jobs and train 10,000 Bahraini annually until 2024.

2.     A Regulatory Reform Package: Simplifying the process of business licenses approval procedures, the launch of a new Government Land Bank, an online portal to showcase investment opportunities, launching an online portal to digitize and simplify urban planning-related services, and the launch of a new residency permit program to attract talent and investors. The package aims to support $2.5 billion of Foreign Direct Investment by 2023.

3.     A Strategic Projects Plan: Catalyzing over $30 billion of investments in strategic projects and creating new industrial investment areas across the Kingdom.

4.     Priority Sectors Plan: Six new sector strategies will be implemented across oil and gas, tourism, logistics, financial services, telecommunications, IT and digital economy and the manufacturing sector. The new sector strategies aim to support annual growth of 5% in the non-oil sector by 2022.

5.     Fiscal Balance Program Update: Eight new fiscal reform workstreams incorporate reducing recurrent non-manpower expenditure, reducing project spend, reducing manpower expenditure; streamlining the distribution of cash subsidies to citizens, increasing Government-owned entities annual contributions, adjusting commodities prices and prices of services provided to companies, introducing new Government services revenue initiatives, and a VAT increase to 10%. The program seeks to balance Bahrain’s budget by 2024, compared to the pre-COVID 19 targets of 2022.

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Source
BNA

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