Bahrain
Despite its size, Bahrain has fostered a thriving in-house community, with a well-developed role to play in a rapidly changing business environment.
Bahrain is the smallest of all members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, with a population of a hair over 1.5 million – just more than half the population of the next-smallest GCC state, Qatar.
Like most of the region’s oil-dependent nations, Bahrain has long fought to diversify its economy and free itself from the volatility of global oil prices. Despite being the first country in the Middle East in which oil was found (1932), Bahrain has struck oil only once more since then and, with a portfolio of merely two oilfields, the need to diversify has always been particularly pressing for the country. As reserves have dropped, the leadership in Bahrain has taken great pains to pivot the economy away from oil and toward diversity.
