SMEs in Bahrain: Representing 90% of the Private Sector

How were the small medium enterprises (SME’s) affected by the crisis? Amin A. Al Arrayed, General Manager of First Bahrain, explains this particular case.

He argues, “The SMEs represent close to 90% of the private sector economy in Bahrain. So when you talk about the private sector, you’re typically talking about small to medium sized companies in terms of volume. There’s typically the government-owned companies, the big players like Bapco or Alba and then you have this huge sector which is all small to medium sized companies. So it’s a very large sector; it’s not a small sector at all. This is different than startup businesses. Startup businesses are a different concept so let’s not confuse the two.”

“Small to medium sized companies can mean anything from a company that employs up to 200 people to a very small company that employs maybe five or ten people with a very small turnover. So it’s a very broad sector. I think that the appeal of our project is that we appeal to so many different companies. If you look at our tenant base and you look at the types of companies that have actually taken our space, you’ll see that it’s very diverse. We have within our spaces financial companies that are using us for documentation storage and disaster recovery.” adds Arrayed.