Amid the Gulf’s increasingly competitive investment landscape, Bahrain is carving out a distinct investment strategy

As competition for global investment heats up across the Gulf, it’s easy to assume bigger is always better.

But for Bahrain, the smallest of the GCC states, its strengths come not from its size but from its strategic positioning, according to the head of the government agency tasked with bringing investment into the kingdom. 

“The good thing about being a small country is that we have no ego, so we’re not trying to compete with the big players,” H.E. Noor bint Ali Alkhulaif, the CEO of Bahrain’s Economic Development Board (EDB), tells Fortune.

“We know what our advantages are and where we can play better, and that’s what we double down on.”

Rather than attempting to compete head-on with its larger neighbors in signing multibillion-dollar deals, the small island kingdom is carving out a distinctive strategy centered on agility, advanced regulation, skilled talent, and niche specialisms to position itself as a complementary investment destination. 

The Bahrain EDB champions five key sectors: financial services, manufacturing, logistics, tourism, and information communications technology.

“Within each sector, we identify subsectors where we see the strongest potential, and revisit them regularly, refining our priorities in line with changing market conditions,” says H.E. Noor, who also serves as Bahrain’s Minister of Sustainable Development.

Bahrain’s financial services industry overtook oil as the largest contributor to real GDP in Q3 2025 and accounted for 17.6% of GDP in 2025. 

Within the sector, Bahrain’s EDB is now focused on expanding wealth and asset management and attracting family offices, particularly from key financial centres in Europe and Asia and markets where Bahrain maintains well-established bilateral relationships.

The Board attended the Milken Institute’s annual conference in Los Angeles in May where it courted various high-net-worth individuals. 

“Dubai can be a saturated market at times, and Bahrain offers a good alternative for many of those companies.” 

Over the past year, Bahrain has accelerated reforms to its trust laws, residency programs, and regulatory environment after studying successful international wealth hubs including Jersey, Guernsey, Switzerland, and Singapore.

Having pioneered the Gulf’s banking sector more than a century ago with the opening of Standard Chartered (then the Eastern Bank) in 1920, the kingdom remains one of the GCC’s most progressive financial regulators.

It led the way with the launch of the region’s first regulatory sandbox for fintech firms in June 2017, and has been an early adopter of open banking, crypto regulation, and........

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