MP Al Salloom: Bahrain’s financial systems stay strong, thanks to long-term fiscal planning

TDT | Manama

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Bahrain’s economy has maintained its stability despite regional tensions and recent Iranian attacks on the Kingdom, MP Ahmed Al Salloom, chairman of Parliament’s Financial and Economic Affairs Committee, said.

He added that services continue to operate, markets are still trading, and public agencies are performing their duties, reflecting the resilience of the country’s economic system.

Al Salloom said years of work on Bahrain’s economic and fiscal base had left the kingdom able to face outside pressure without throwing daily life off course or stopping business.

Challenges

“Financial stability is not measured only by the absence of challenges,” he said. “It is measured by the state’s ability to manage these challenges without upsetting its overall balance, disrupting people’s interests or bringing economic activity to a halt.”

He said Bahrain went into the current spell with strong institutions, up-to-date laws, a well-rooted banking and finance sector, and government policy built on fiscal discipline and long-range planning.

That, he said, had helped keep sectors open, services going and markets moving.

“What was achieved over the past years was not a temporary response,” he said. “It was a real foundation for an economy able to face challenges and deal with regional and international shifts with confidence and calm.”

Al Salloom said the Kingdom’s economic and financial base had been built over many years to support growth in calmer times and shield the economy in harder ones.

Base

He said that base was wider than buildings and projects, covering laws, banking systems, oversight, fiscal policy, digital services, the investment climate, the speed of government work and the ability to take decisions at the right time.

“That is what gives the economy real strength,” he said.

He said Bahrain’s ability to absorb shocks also came from past experience in dealing with hard periods, adding that the current response did not begin from scratch.

Instead, he said, it drew on an administrative and economic system used to keeping things steady and stopping outside pressure from spilling into life at home.

Policy

On investor confidence, Al Salloom said government policy had helped by keeping fiscal order while still backing growth and key sectors.

Investors, he said, look first for stability, clear direction, quick procedures, working institutions and a state that is able to deal with pressure without disorder.

“When the investor sees that the state is working, that services are continuing, that institutions are doing their job and that economic life is not stopping, that sends a strong message of reassurance to the market,” he said. He said easier procedures, quicker services and clearer laws had also helped build trust in Bahrain’s market, while co-operation between the public and private sectors had given the economy extra room to keep going through a hard spell.

Partner

The private sector, he said, had shown itself to be “a real partner in development”.

Al Salloom said Bahrain’s ability to recover quickly rested on clear direction from the leadership, strong institutions, a fairly varied economic base and digital readiness.

He said the kingdom had spread activity across finance, logistics, tourism, trade and the digital economy, which helped it cope when pressure hit one part of the market.

Trust

The lawmaker also pointed to public and investor trust as one of the main supports, saying such trust had grown from steady institutional work, legal stability and clear policy over time.

“We look at Bahrain’s economy with reassurance,” he said, “not because there are no challenges, but because the foundations of strength and resilience in it are firm and clear.”