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The Bahrain Economic Recovery Plan (ERP) was presented by the Crown Prince and Prime Minister on 31 October 2021 as a comprehensive five-pillar structural programme responding to the COVID-19 economic shock and framing Bahrain's economic trajectory through the decade:
Pillar 1 — Strategic Projects Plan: Catalyses over USD 30 billion of investments in strategic projects and creates new industrial investment areas across the Kingdom. Projects include metro expansion, a new bridge (potentially the Bahrain–Qatar causeway feasibility programme), tourism resort development, and expansion of Khalifa Bin Salman Port and Bahrain International Airport. Alba's USD 1.5 billion Line 6 smelter expansion — which pushed annual capacity from ~970,000 t to ~1.54 million t — and Garmco's USD 100 million sheet-manufacturing capacity expansion both sit within this pipeline, underpinning Bahrain's position as the largest non-Chinese aluminium downstream cluster in the Gulf.
Pillar 2 — Priority Sectors Plan: Six new sector strategies for oil and gas, tourism, logistics, financial services, telecommunications/ICT, and manufacturing. The manufacturing strategy is anchored by the aluminium downstream cluster: Alba + Garmco rolling + Midal Cables + Balexco extrusions + Bahrain Aluminium Casting + Aluwheel collectively supply European auto/aerospace (Constellium, Hydro, Speira), US rolling (Novelis, Arconic), and East Asian converters.
Pillar 3 — Labour Market Reform Plan: New long-term National Labour Market Strategy targeting 20,000 Bahraini jobs and 10,000 annual training slots through 2024. Expands Tamkeen Labour Fund mandate and Bahrainisation targets for priority sectors. A new residency permit programme to attract foreign talent and investors is included under the regulatory sub-component.
Pillar 4 — Regulatory Reform Package: Targets USD 2.5 billion of FDI by 2023 through simplified business-licence approval, a Government Land Bank, an online investment-opportunity portal, and a new digital urban-planning platform. This pillar is the legislative parent for subsequent MOIC foreign-ownership liberalisation decisions including MOIC Decision 53 (2024).
Pillar 5 — Fiscal Reform: Targets fiscal balance by 2024 via the Fiscal Balance Programme extension and structural-revenue measures, principally the doubling of VAT from 5% to 10% effective 1 January 2022, implemented under Royal Decree 33/2021.
with non-Chinese feedstock; the ERP's infrastructure and fiscal-stability framework is the enabling policy context for Alba's continued capacity investment and power-supply expansion (Power Station 5).
decisions through 2030, making it the correct responds_to anchor for any future Bahrain filing that traces its authority to the Crown Prince's October 2021 mandate.
hydrocarbon revenues and GCC financial-support tranches, stabilising the sovereign's ability to fund the USD 30bn project pipeline.
Oman Vision 2040, and Saudi Vision 2030 as a GCC whole-of-government strategic framework.
referenced under Pillar 1) has not progressed to formal treaty or tender as of May 2026 — track for separate filing if a binding instrument is adopted.
Bahraini investment-liberalisation decisions should be filed with responds_to: [2021-10-31-bahrain-economic-recovery-plan-2021].
material filing point within the ERP aluminium-cluster narrative.