Bahrain has only 1.5 million people. It is smaller than many cities around the world, much less other countries. In terms of the area, the nation of the Persian Gulf Island is only about 300 square kilometers.
But its size is not a disadvantage, according to Nor Alhulaif, Bahrain’s minister of sustainable development.
“The way we see that, Bahrain is a terrain testing for countries in the region,” Al Khulaf said HappinessThe most powerful summit of women in the adjacent Saudi Arabia last week.
Companies that are business business in the Council for Cooperation Bay (GCC) – Kui includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman, using Bahrain for this purpose.
You can “come and test your idea on a smaller extent, and if it goes wrong, so what, it is 1.5 million people – it did not accelerate the evil,” she said. But if you succeed, you get confidence because you have increased it throughout the region, it noticed. “We see Bahrain as GCC’s gate.”
Al Khulaif, who also serves as the Director General of the Bahrain’s economic development committee, said small size also allows for a narrow cooperation.
“We don’t really talk like a government, private sector and company,” she said. “There’s a team of Bahrain Etos in the country and we do it together.”
This helps explain how Bahrain thus efficiently transformed his economy outside the oil.
“For us, the oil is neither the largest sector in our economy, and almost two years have already passed and it is the result of the trip that extends over decades,” she said.
Instead, financial services is the largest sector, and Fintech is a large area of growth, she said. Production, logistics, tourism and technology are also key sectors.
Bahrain has long had close economic ties with Saudi Arabia and learned to complement much higher neighbor, which is connected by breeding.
“We see each other as Saudi’s service center,” Al Khulaf said.
If Saudi Arabia develops production, for example, to support the support functions for this, as the last office, said, “Our economy and Saudi economy are interconnected much, many years and see you as an integral part of the GCC economy.”
This story is originally presented Fortune.com
