Economic Affairs Editor
The Arab Monetary Fund expected the Bahraini economy to record about 2.7% in 2025, and 3.3% in 2026, compared to 2.6% in 2024, driven by growth in the non -oil sector, which constitutes the largest part of the gross domestic product.
The Arab Monetary Fund suggests investing in infrastructure sectors, logistics services, modern financial technologies, and tourism continues to continue this growth.
These expectations come in light of the continued implementation of the economic recovery plan launched by Bahrain in October 2021, including development projects worth more than $ 30 billion, which included vital sectors such as tourism, communications, industry, housing, education, youth and sports. The plan also focused on developing promising sectors, by launching national economic diversification strategies, and enhancing the contribution of sectors such as information technology, logistical services, and financial services in GDP.
The fund also expected that the current account will continue to achieve comfortable surpluses, with the support of foreign exchange revenues from the oil, aluminum and tourism sectors.
The Arab Monetary Fund expects that the Arab economy will continue to improve to record a growth rate of 3.8% in 2025, and 4.3% in 2026, compared to 2.2% in 2024, supported by improving macroeconomic indicators, economic reforms and diversification strategies in most Arab countries. It is also likely that inflation rates decrease significantly from 31.9% in 2024 to 20.8% in 2025, then to 14.2% in 2026. With the exclusion of countries with exceptional inflationary pressure, rates may decrease to 7.6% in 2025 and 5.6% in 2026.
He expected the growth rate in the economies of the Gulf Cooperation Council to improve from 2.2% in 2024 to 4.0% in 2025, to reach 4.4% in 2026, thanks to non -oil sectors, infrastructure projects, and economic diversification efforts.
He also expected that the oil exporting Arab countries (Algeria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen) would record a growth of 3.3% in 2025 and 3.8% in 2026, taking advantage of the improvement of economic performance in Libya and the continued momentum of growth in Algeria.
As for the oil importing countries, they continued to reform their public finances by developing tax policies, rationalizing spending, and gradually facilitating monetary policy, which will contribute to the stability of economic conditions. Its growth rate is expected to increase from 2.7% in 2024 to 3.8% in 2025, to 4.3% in 2026.
Despite the challenges related to global trade tensions, geopolitical developments and energy fluctuations, the report confirms that the Arab region is moving towards achieving positive growth rates, while benefiting from economic diversification strategies and infrastructure projects, along with the dynamics of the economies of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries that represent about two -thirds of the Arab GDP
