Industry Minister participates in ministerial roundtable

Geneva, Oct. 25 (BNA): The Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism, Mr. Zayed R. Alzayani participated in the ministerial roundtable on "Entrepreneurship for Sustainable Development". This came on the sideline of World Investment Forum, which is held in Geneva. On this occasion, the minister delivered a speech stating that SMEs has been identified as a vital sector in Bahrain’s economy, representing 99.3% of the total number of local companies.  He added that "the growth and expansion of SMEs are constrained by challenges and obstacles fall into broad areas of access to finance, physical infrastructure, level of technology, regulatory framework, access to information and advice, access to market, business development services, technical and managerial skills, linkage information and environmental issues." He noted that "the SMEs Development Board, which  is formed based on the directives of H.R.H. Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, The Crown Prince, and Chairman of the Economic Development Board aims to strengthen Startups and SMEs capacities to boost their competitiveness in domestic, regional and global markets in addition to increase the current figures of SMEs contribution to the GDP (30%), SMEs exports (8%) and national employment levels (64% of private sector employment)."  The minister confirmed that "Bahrain has a healthy economic diversification strategy, enabling the non-oil sector to achieve a growth of 5% in 2017, with Financial Services, Manufacturing, Transport and Logistics leading the growth." He said that "Bahrain also encourages innovation through its supportive approach for Startups, combined with being a leading financial hub, we introduced the FinTech Regulatory Sandbox in mid-2017, which allows entrepreneurs to test and fine-tune their tech-based ideas on customers before they are released to the market." The next Global Entrepreneurship Congress will be held in Bahrain from April 15 to 18, 2019, gathering thousands of entrepreneurs, investors, researchers, policymakers and other startup champions from more than 170 countries.