Although its revenues from oil and gas have fallen, the government of Bahrain is ploughing new investment into the kingdom’s energy sector in the hopes that the broader economy will reap the benefits in the years to come. This counter-cyclical spending is designed to allow a significant increase in refinery capacity and a more secure supply of...
It has been more than a decade since Bahrain’s Shura Council, the state’s main legislative body, first granted its approval for a compulsory health insurance system. The proposal came at a time when governments across the region were attempting to shift the increasingly costly burden of health care provision towards the private sector. After...
Bahrain’s sharia-compliant financial institutions enter 2017 after weathering the tumultuous economic environment and changing regulatory landscape of the previous year. Despite the challenges, the kingdom’s Islamic banks continue to expand in the domestic market and beyond, while activity in the newly reinforced sharia-compliant insurance...
Regulators are encouraging mergers and acquisitions in Bahrain’s Islamic banking industry in a bid to cement the country’s position as one of the world’s leading sharia-compliant financial centres. At the end of 2016 the governor of the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) repeated calls for the country’s Islamic lenders – of which there are...
Within the spectrum of Islamic financial services (IFS), project financing has been one of the slower segments to develop. Historically, the reason for this has been the cost differential between conventional project financing and its sharia-compliant counterpart. In the past, conventional tenors also tended to be longer – up to 20 years for...
The region’s exchanges have operated in adverse economic conditions since the decline of oil prices began in the second half of 2014, and the Bahrain Bourse (BHB) is no exception. However, the apparent stabilisation of global oil prices in 2016 has brought a similar firming of the main index and, after a year of shrinking stock prices, some...
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