Since August 2015, red single-decker buses have become increasingly common in Bahrain as the Public Transport Network (PTN), launched four months earlier, expanded to 32 routes to cover 77% of the population. The Ministry of Transport and Telecommunications (MTT) declared the event a “key milestone” in the development of an integrated public transport network envisaged in Bahrain’s Economic Vision…
The transport sector is set to be one of the major recipients of investment from a $10bn GCC fund announced to help Bahrain after a GCC meeting in Riyadh in 2011. Four years later, the country’s wealthy neighbours Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE began to supply the money for substantial transport projects, and contractors broke ground on the first schemes to be financed by the fund, which is to…
As GCC money pours into infrastructure and housing projects in Bahrain, there are places where the skyline is still dominated by abandoned building sites that serve as reminders of the 2008 global economic downturn and property crash. Now, the government is taking legal action to confront the issue. Royal Decree Introduced in December 2014, Legislative Decree No. 66 created a judicial committee to…
As part of a raft of legislation designed to restore confidence to the property sector and to protect the rights of those involved in property transactions, a new law to ensure the rights of both landlords and tenants of rented property has been passed. Although the new piece of legislation, Law No. 27, is yet to be implemented, it is designed to remove the confusion that has surrounded rental agreements.…
Faced with a backlog of more than 50,000 social housing requests, Bahrain’s Ministry of Housing (MoH) has turned to the private sector for help, and in 2016 the first citizens began to receive the keys to brand new properties built under a pioneering public-private partnership (PPP). Private Partner The developer Naseej signed a BD208m ($548) contract to build 2800 affordable and social housing…
The Middle East’s appetite for sweets and savoury snacks can be thanked for more than $240m worth of investments in Bahrain in just two years. In 2016 the new $90m Mondelez factory is due to start producing biscuits that will be shipped all over the MENA region and parts of Asia. It is opening two years after Arabian Sugar’s $150m refinery launched in the kingdom. Feeding the growing populations…
As Aluminium Bahrain (Alba) celebrates the 45th anniversary of aluminium production in Bahrain, the firm is looking to the future and working on the construction of its sixth pot line, an expansion plan that will make the company the world’s largest single-site smelter. A few weeks after Alba announced it would be going ahead with the expansion in July 2015, the company released its half-year results.…
Bahrain’s National Tourism Strategy extends from 2015 to 2018 and envisages a change of strategy for the industry. The kingdom emerged as the first shopping, leisure and service centre in the Gulf in the 1970s, and consequently began to attract high weekend traffic from across the region. Since 2000 other regional leisure destinations have begun to mature, with Bahrain taking steps to differentiate…
Good hotels and visitor attractions are in no short supply in Bahrain. The island boasts 18 five-star hotels, including names such as Ritz-Carlton and Novotel, and in recent years chains such as Rotana and Four Seasons have entered the market. In addition to sporting fixtures such as the Bahrain Grand Prix, the country has natural attractions like the Hawar Islands, cultural sites such as the Barbar…
New investments in the hospitality sector and efforts to raise Bahrain’s international profile should drive tourism growth in 2016, broadening the kingdom’s appeal as a destination for travellers from the region and further afield. With Manama named the “Capital of Gulf Tourism 2016” in early January by the tourism ministers of the GCC, a series of projects and exhibitions are planned to help…
