Bahrain : Economic Development Board (EDB) Chief Executive Khalid Ebrahim Humaidan has hailed the visit by the President of Cyprus Nicos Anastasiades to the EDB as an important opportunity to highlight the economic successes of Bahrain, which boasts a status of a well-diversified economy in the region and offers attractive business climate to foreign investors.
“We had the honour of welcoming President Nicos Anastasiades and his accompanying delegation to the EDB where we conducted a presentation,” he said at a media briefing.
“During the presentation we spoke about the economy of Bahrain, the incentives Bahrain offers for investors and the priority sectors. Bahrain offers 100 per cent ownership to foreign companies and repatriation of capital.”
Bahrain through its intensive approach to develop the skilled local work force continues to utlise its resources of labour fund to support development of locals, he said.
“Our priority sectors are financial services, manufacturing, and logistics, ICT, education and health care and real estate and tourism. We would continue our dialogue with our colleagues from Cyprus in the areas we are going to collaborate specially in tourism.”
Bahrain’s economic diversification started 20 years ago when oil represented 40 per cent of the GDP, the Economic Development Board was created tasked with to diversify the national economy, he added.
“Today, oil represents less than 20 per cent, financial services is 18 per cent and manufacturing at 14 per cent. One of the indicators that we regularly follow up to make sure that Bahrain remains attractive for investors is FDI stock GDP, luckily the ratio of Bahrain today is double the global effort. In terms of incentives Bahrain offers to investors the most important ones are zero per cent corporate tax, a 100 per cent foreign ownership for most commercial activities and we have low operating cost relatively speaking,” he said.
Cypriot Government Spokesman Marios Pelekanos thanked the EDB and said that they see great prospects for strengthening further the corporation between the two countries and enhancing the trade relations in both goods and services as well as joint investments.
“We will certainly convey the contents of presentation and business opportunities communicated to us to the business community in Cyprus including the Cyprus Chamber of Commerce and Industry,” he said.
“The Cypriot business community would be so eager to seize opportunities in Bahrain and to collaborate with businesses and investors in Bahrain. Cyprus offers a number of advantages as a business-friendly location which provides access to the European market and for this reason we have quite number of companies from the region setting up presence and offices in our country.”
