Bahrain ranks second after the UAE (Dubai) as the easiest place to do business in the GCC, according to a major survey of companies operating in the region.

However, despite the ease of doing business less than 4 per cent of the more than 400 senior executives who took part in the ‘Leaders in Dubai Business Forum – 2006 Doing Business in the GCC’ survey said that Bahrain was their major source of business in the region and only 5.1 per cent said they wanted to do more business in the country.
The survey, which asked senior executives about their attitudes to doing business in the region and their investment and expansion plans for the future, found that a massive 92 per cent of them expected to increase the amount of business they did in the GCC in the next 12 months.
More than 83 per cent of those surveyed say they intend increasing their investment in the Gulf over the next 12 months, with less than 3 per cent intending to reduce their investment. Over 47 per cent per cent of those surveyed do business in Bahrain.
In further good news for job seekers, more than 70 per cent said they would employ more staff.
The survey was commissioned by IIR, organisers of the Leaders in Dubai Business Forum 2006, and conducted by local company Fusion Marketing & Management in conjunction with US survey company SurveyMonkey. It is one of the most comprehensive of its type ever conducted in the Gulf and questioned hundreds of public and corporate decision-makers from throughout the Middle East about their plans and attitude towards doing business in the GCC.
A total of 403 senior executives, comprising mainly chief executive officers, managing directors and general managers from the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Egypt and Syria, responded to the survey. The respondents represented companies doing business in the GCC but with headquarters in 28 different countries from Austria and Azerbaijan to the UK and US.
While confidence in doing business in the GCC in general was very high, more than half of the executives said bureaucratic delays, poor corporate governance, a lack of skilled labour and difficulties with visas had a noticeable to severe impact on their business.
 “This is one of the most important and comprehensive surveys of senior corporate decision-makers doing business in the GCC ever conducted in the region,” said Leaders in Dubai Business Forum event director Alan Kelly.
“It represents more than 400 local, national and multi-national companies and public sector organisations and the results point to a very positive foreseeable future for the region.”
The executives who responded to the survey are in charge of companies that between them employ more than 250,000 people in the region and have a combined turnover of many billions of dollars.
“Ninety two per cent of them say they expect to increase the amount of business they do in the GCC in the next 12 months. That’s an astounding figure,” said Kelly.
“There is a lot of good news in the results but there are also lessons for governments in the region.
“While confidence in government is high, bureaucratic delays are causing severe problems for many companies; the shortage of skilled labour is an ongoing problem and something needs to be done to improve the visa system.”