Bahrain in Business Reports
Advisors and business analysts can refer to third party research that reinforces Bahrain's investment benefits across a variety of economic and FDI indexes.
September 2009-Economic Freedom of the World 2009, The Fraser Institute
The economic freedom index measures the degree to which the policies and institutions of countries are supportive of economic freedom. The annual report is published in conjunction with the Economic Freedom Network, a group of independent research and educational institutes .
Hong Kong retains the highest rating for economic freedom. The other top 10 nations are: Singapore, New Zealand , Switzerland , Chile, the United States, Ireland, Canada , Australia , and the United Kingdom. Bahrain has substantially increased its scores and improved its relative levels of economic freedom. Bahrain’s overall rank has jumped 11 places from 31st to 20th - marking it amongst the “ 20 freest economies” in the world. Remarkably Bahrain is the only economy that has showed an upward trend amongst the GCC economies covered in the report - UAE, Kuwait and Oman regressed in this year’s report.
Bahrain has showed tremendous improvement in the area of –“Regulations” ( 5th ) compared to (34th )in 2008- thus improving by 29 places . In addition Bahrain (1) tops the Labor Market regulation sub area - leading worldwide followed by Uganda (2) ,United States (3) and Hong Kong (4).
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January 2010-The Index of Economic Freedom, The Heritage Foundation
The report ranks nations according to their relative freedom across 10 different categories. Bahrain tops the Middle East in its score, and ranks number 13 worldwide. Bahrain's economy is very free (76.3%) for a Middle Eastern country, with higher scores than the world average in all of the 10 factors of economic freedom. Business freedom, fiscal freedom, monetary freedom, and especially financial freedom are high. The complete absence of income or corporate taxes in all industries except oil gives Bahrain a global competitive commercial advantage. Bahrain continues improving in its rank- in 2009 Bahrain ranked 16 worldwide and has improved by three ranks since then.
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2009-Global Information Technology Report (2008-2009), World Economic Forum/INSEAD
Recognized as the ‘gold standard’ for benchmarking the networked readiness and technological competitiveness of the world’s economies. Bahrain ranks 37th out of 134 studied countries. Its ranked has improved by eight points since the last annual report. Bahrain ranks the 3rd in the GCC when it comes to technological competitiveness.
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2009-Doing Business Report (2009), The World Bank Group
The report provides objective measures of business regulations and their enforcement across 181 economies and select citites.
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September 2008- Doing Business Report (2009), The World Bank Group
The report tracks regulatory reforms aimed at improving the ease of doing business by measuring their impact on 10 indicator sets of business regulation that record the time and cost to meet government requirements in starting and operating a business, trading across borders, paying taxes, and closing a business. Out of 181 tracked economies, Bahrain ranks 18th, the second of GCC nations after Saudi Arabia and ahead of Qatar, the UAE and Kuwait.
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September 2008-World Investment Report, UNCTAD
The report focuses on trends in foreign direct investment (FDI) worldwide, at the regional and country levels and emerging measures to improve its contribution to development. Every issue of the report includes analysis of trends on FDI during the previous year, rankings of the largest transnational corporations in the world, an in-depth analysis of selected topics related to FDI, policy analysis and recommendations and a statistical annex with data on FDI flows and stocks for 196 economies.
The Inward FDI performance index ranks countries by the FDI they receive relative to their economic size. It is the ratio of a country's share in global FDI inflows to its share in global GDP. Bahrain continues to rank the 12th position out of 141 economies, ahead of all GCC nations. The Outward FDI performance index shows the share of a country's outward FDI in world FDI as a ratio of its share in world GDP. Bahrain ranks 9th of 141 economies, and is the second ranking GCC economy ahead of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
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July 2008-Emerging Bahrain, Oxford Business Group
The report is written by a team of analysts based on the ground for six months, and the result of numerous interviews in a various fields, the series offers an extensive independent, unbiased and accurate intelligence on Bahrain and its economy.
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June 2008-Economic Indicators Report, The Central Bank of Bahrain
Presents data on a selection of key economic and social indicators for the Kingdom of Bahrain. Published on a quarterly basis.
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March 2008-Economic Indicators Report, The Central Bank of Bahrain
Presents data on a selection of key economic and social indicators for the Kingdom of Bahrain. Published on a quarterly basis.
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July 2007-Financial Stability Report, The Central Bank of Bahrain
Evaluates the financial condition and performance of financial intermediaries and markets, identifies potential risks to financial stability and proposes remedial supervisory actions for any recognized vulnerabilities. The report is published semi-annually.
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