Bahrain Mirror (Exclusive): Why is Bahrain investing a billion and a half dollars in the British economy? Has there been a feasibility study conducted for such investments? Or does political feasibility trump economic feasibility?

According to the International Monetary Fund, the British economy will record a contraction for the second year in a row, doubting its ability to overcome the recession by the end of this year.

Analysts at Deutsche Bank said UK GDP was due to take until 2024 to return to the level of December 2019 before the pandemic struck.

Recent reports showed that UK GDP slowed last month, with a growth of only 0.0%.

All these figures point to one conclusion that the government of Bahrain is moving toward investing in the wrong place, without a feasibility study, as growth in key sectors including services and production is declining.

Does Mumtalakat have numbers other than these? And in which sectors will it inject this huge sum? What is the financial return of these investments?

Neither Prime Minister Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa nor Minister of Finance and National Economy Salman bin Khalifa Al Khalifa will provide answers to these questions or clarifications, because in their eyes public money has been turned into private money.

Mumtalakat is not asked about its investments and is not monitored because it has become a private company, according to a statement published by the Bahrain News Agency about the agreement to invest £300 million in the UK.

All of Bahrain's non-oil assets have been turned into a private company managed by the ruling family (holding) with its knowledge, which disposes of its revenues without public knowledge and invests and makes losses wherever it wants.

The ruling family chose Britain because the purpose was political rather than financial investment, otherwise the revenues of investing in other countries are more rewarding than investing in a country, which is considered the worst among the major economies.

Mumtalakat could have invested in the Saudi economy, for example, which attracts foreign investment from around the world and records good growth rates.

The real GDP in Saudi Arabia increased during the first quarter of 2023 by 3.9 %, compared to what it was during the same period of the previous year 2022.

Speaking of numbers and far from politics, investment opportunities in the Gulf region or East Asia are better than in Britain, which is struggling due to the effects of the pandemic and Brexit.

It is also not possible to rely on the existence of the parliament in Bahrain and consider it a supervisory institution, as the Council is in its worst conditions in terms of powers and formation, as all its MPs were brought by the same authority which supported them in the elections and secured their victory, and therefore it is not possible to hope for an explicit parliamentary accountability of the government about these huge funds that it is investing abroad.

Arabic Version