Economic Diversification in Bahrain

Abstract

Countries, such as the GCC countries, that predominantly rely for their income on oil resources face the reality that these sources of their income would not last forever. Thus, being a member of the GCC countries, Bahrain has been pursuing the policies of sustainable and diversified economic growth. This paper uses the share of nonoil real GDP to total real GDP as a measure of diversification to access the extent of diversification in Bahrain. The shares of nonoil GDP increased from 64% in the beginning of this of this century to 80% in 2016 with an average annual growth rate of 6.2% for the period 2002-2016. This success story seems to have an inherent problem. A bivariate structural VAR model  with nonoil real GDP and oil price shows that oil prices (indirectly oil sector) have positive impact on the movements of the nonoil real GDP. This means nonoil sector has been very much dependent on the oil sector and neutralizing the dependence is required for the post oil era.