Bahrain Mirror: Abdulhakim Al-Shammari, Chairman of Commercial Market Committee and Board Member of the Bahrain Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BCCI), stressed the need to open the bridge linking Bahrain and Saudi Arabia to reduce the losses the Bahraini economy has suffered as a result of this closure, which occurred due to measures to combat the Coronavirus epidemic.

Al-Shammari pointed out that more than 50,000 passengers used to cross the bridge daily for tourism, studying, work and shopping. Its closure deprived the economies of the Kingdom of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia of hundreds of millions of dinars in the form of revenues to buy goods, hotel and tourism services, restaurant services and travel through Bahrain International Airport. The losses are estimated at more than 500 million dinars over the past few months.

It is worth mentioning that the volume of Saudi investment in Bahrain reached 2.3 billion dinars in 2018, and that the number of commercial records of Saudis in the Kingdom of Bahrain reached 3,335 commercial records, including 1772 individual institutions, and 1563 companies. This number increased during the past two years due to the facilities granted to Saudi investors in particular. These records operate in several areas including food, plastics and petrochemicals manufacturing; banking, legal, and medical services; cosmetics and advertising services, social media services, as well as retail, the sale of equipment, furniture, fruits and vegetables, land and air transport, courier transport, car rental, telecommunications and entertainment.

Saudis and expatriates from Saudi Arabia shopping accounts for more than 50% of the income of Bahrain's major malls, such as the Dragon mall, the Avenues, City Center, Al-Aali, and Al-Saif Complex.

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