Hassan Al-Sitri
The government has reservations about a draft parliamentary law establishing the Industrial Development Fund, stating that the objectives and tasks of the proposed fund overlap with the tasks and powers of other bodies and institutions concerned with this sector, such as the Economic Development Board, the Labor Fund (Tamkeen), the Ministry of Industry and Trade, the Bahrain Investors Center, and the Bahrain Development Bank.
The government also decided that the fund should be financed from the profits allocated to it from the profits of the Bahrain Mumtalakat Holding Company. In this regard, this directive is inconsistent with the purposes that the company was established to achieve, and specified in its articles of association and articles of association, which are mainly focused on managing assets and investing them in accordance with a tight financial and commercial framework aimed at maximizing the return on those assets, without deviating from its basic activity or burdening it with obligations outside the scope of its legal purpose.
Its financing also from the state’s general budget constitutes a serious financial burden on it, resulting in deducting part of the public resources allocated to existing sectors and services or increasing annual financial obligations, which affects spending priorities.
The government confirmed that the draft law lacks economic and financial studies to demonstrate the feasibility of establishing a fund in place of the proposed project.
