According to to the latest World Investment Report (WIR 2020) from the UN Conference of Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in 2019, Bahrain attracted $942 million of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). The annual report shares global investment flows, explores trade trends and assesses Government policies that seek to expand world trade.
The report has globally shown that FDI flows mounted to $1.540 trillion, making 1.76% of global GDP; making Bahrain surpass the global average performance with FDI accounting for 2.45% of national GDP the previous year.
It’s noteworthy that it’s the third year in a row in which Bahrain attracted regional FDIs worthing US$ 1 billion, most evidently bucking global trends in 2018 to see an impressive 16% increase in FDI during challenging times in which global flow had reached its worse condition since the global financial crisis.
Commenting on the occasion, Chief Executive of the Economic Development Board of Bahrain, H.E. Khalid Humaidan has shared: “At the EDB, our core mandate is to support direct investment which facilitates economic diversification and leads to sustainable growth, ultimately creating employment opportunities in the market.”
2019 was quite the year of milestones for the Kingdom of Bahrain, marking the launch of the region’s first AWS hyperscale data-centre, as well as being named the fourth most improved economy in the world in the latest World Bank Ease of Doing Business report.
Bahrain’s Economic Development Board, the Kingdom’s Investment Promotion Agency, has managed to attract 134 new companies to Bahrain, expected to result in a total investment value of $835 million and create over 6000 jobs in the local market over the next three years.