The Middle East

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.

After a year characterised by falling global prices for both crude oil and aluminium, there is a surprising degree of optimism in Bahrain’s economy. With major investments in its infrastructure being financed by the Gulf Development Fund and Aluminium Bahrain’s (Alba) sixth pot line moving ahead, there is a sense that Bahrain is busy, from its...

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...

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...