- With the consent of Bahrain cabinet, extending all its support and passing new rule. It states that small companies and start-ups will be significant beneficiaries as they will get more business.
According to a new report, Bahrain’s cabinet in the recently concluded event has introduced new quota regarding all major public tenders. It’s being stipulated that at least 10 percent of the prime contracts will be offered to small and medium enterprises (SMEs); this will be a major booster for the segment.
It will be the first-ever time as the significant public tenders (10 percent) quota on auctioning for all service facilities remained with government enterprises, but this new mandate will thus, bring in the change as it would thus, extends this quota to all public tenders ensuring that SME’s get more access to government deals, as stated by a report in the Gulf Daily News (GDN) website.
Although the quotas supporting the SME’s and extending their growth is nothing new to the region, providing 10 percent of prime contracts is a unique and relatively game-changer, in the United Arab Emirates, Expo 2020, Dubai during March, stated that over half of all contract related to the event has been awarded to SMEs and is bang on the target for meeting its goal by being awarded the fifth time the budget allocated to this sector in past five years.
According to Tina Ghanem, director of Expo 2020’s Online Marketplace (OMP), stated in March during presentation with Arabian Business Start-Up Academy in Dubai that, “As far as the statistics report are concerned, they have recorded data that over 26,000 registered suppliers from one hundred and fifty (150)countries want to do business with them. And that a major chunk (75 percent) of these companies are SME’s.”
In January 2016, The Central Bank of Egypt announced a new rule that all banks in and across country or region must at least lend 20 percent of loans for the upbringing and development of SME’s sector by the end of 2020.
With a majority of millennials and youth power joining SME’s sector and desiring to be entrepreneurs, there is no doubt that this move would benefit the overall SME sector development across the region and make Bahrain touted as a global hub for SME.
