The Bahraini government reduced the allowances of many items listed under the “recurrent expenses” section in the state budget for the years 2017 and 2018, especially in the financial allocations of next year (2018).

The Parliamentary Committee on Legislative and Legal Affairs rejected a draft law imposing a limit for the public debt not exceed 60% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

Finance Minister Ahmed bin Mohammed Al Khalifa replied to a question raised by MP about the details of unified GCC VAT agreement that will be reviewed by the House of Representatives in its next session on Tuesday (May 23, 2017) that "the basic food items, medicines and medical supplies will be excluded from the VAT that will be imposed by Bahrain along with the other GCC states."

The Saudi Ambassador in Bahrain Abdullah Al-Sheikh, said that the delay is working on the one unified point, which was supposed to be launched on March 6 on the bridge linking Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, is due to technical procedures.

Bahraini local newspaper al-Wasat issued a report on government employees’ complain that their promotions have been frozen for two months now, under the pretext that the 2017 and 2018 state budget had not yet been approved.

Member of the finance and Economic Affairs Committee Ahmed Qarata expected that the state’s public debt of the two fiscal years (2017 and 2018) would be referred to the House of Representatives at the end of March 2017, adding that the debt would be about 2 billion BD to each fiscal years; i.e. 4 billion BD to the two fiscal years.

Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) Governor Rashid Al-Miraj said that issue of tax regimes and raising it in the Gulf States remain a financial matter under the specialty of the Ministry of Finance and the Finance Ministers in the region, who are competent to deal with such issues.

The Kingdom of Bahrain is in talks with lenders for an Islamic bond, or sukuk, which is expected to be issued in the first quarter of 2017, banking sources told Reuters.