Tag: Bahrain

Bahrain's Economic Development Board attracted a record USD 3.5 billion in Foreign Direct Investment during 2025, with the Kingdom's financial services, ICT, manufacturing and logistics sectors all recording new entrants as Bahrain leverages its strategic Saudi gateway position, competitive costs and regulatory excellence to compete for Gulf FDI.

Bahrain has emerged as the Gulf's leading fintech destination, with FinTech Bay hosting over 500 registered companies across Islamic finance, payments, digital banking and insurtech sectors — supported by the Central Bank of Bahrain's sandbox regime, the most permissive in the region.

Bahrain FinTech Bay has evolved into the GCC's most advanced fintech ecosystem, built on the region's first regulatory sandbox (2017), first open banking framework (2018), and a unified Central Bank of Bahrain that has consistently moved faster than larger Gulf counterparts on emerging financial technology regulation.

Bahrain's non-oil sectors now represent approximately 85 per cent of GDP — with financial services alone at 17 per cent — making the Kingdom the GCC's most structurally diversified economy by this measure, built on the foundations of Vision 2030, a unified financial regulator, and early-mover regulatory innovation.

UAE infrastructure faces 90,000 to 200,000 cyber breach attempts daily in 2026, with 128 confirmed incidents recorded year-to-date. The Government Cybersecurity Summit, held at Conrad Etihad Towers in Abu Dhabi on June 9, brought 400-plus leaders together to coordinate the GCC's digital defence response.