Bahrain has won two global awards for its foreign direct investment (FDI) strategy at the fDi Intelligence Awards 2021.

Organised by the Financial Times Group publication, the awards are based on the performance of 34 investment promotion agencies (IPAs), focusing on IPAs that stood out in rankings published by fDi Intelligence in the past year.

Bahrain was named the winner of fDi’s choice Bespoke Award for Infrastructure Developments, becoming the only GCC country to receive the award in the field.

The development of infrastructure is still important to the success of economic and business growth.

In Bahrain, the investment has gone into an array of areas, increasing the capacity of airports by 75 per cent, multi-billion-dollar investments into transport works, as well as huge investment into real estate with a focus on medical and education sectors, said fDi Intelligence.

The Economic Development Board (EDB), Bahrain’s national investment promotion agency, was also awarded fDi’s choice Bespoke Award for staff training in recognition of the EDB’s upskilling efforts, as well as its strategic approach to developing technical, business and leadership skills.

Promoting a learning culture is important and will often pay for itself and more. The EDB has placed a high value on this with its talent management system built to encourage a high-performance, learning culture.

Its strategic approach, with a focus on a range of areas such as technical, business and leadership skills, was a standout approach for our judges.

The awards reflect the effectiveness of the plan embraced by the EDB and its efforts with its partners in Team Bahrain to attract direct investments and create quality job opportunities in the local market.

It also showcases the level of commitment and scale of strategic infrastructure projects that have been accomplished, in addition to the pool of local talent in Bahrain.

Bahrain has also recently embarked on an Economic Recovery Plan to drive growth based on five priorities including enhancing the overall business friendly environment to attract direct investments, creating new opportunities and launching over $30 billion worth of strategic projects.