Competitive Advantage In Bahrain

Competitive advantage is a set of unique attributes of a nation. It is an advantage, capability, ability, strategy, that a nation or state or country has and enabling it to generate or produce or make more sales, profit, money, income and revenue and enables it to attract and retain more investors than other nations (competitors). It also puts a state in a profitable and superior strategic business position in the global markets (OU, 2010).

The above figure: the determinants of national competitive advantage of Porter (OU, 2010).

Applying Porter’s Diamond model of nations which consists of four major attributes to determine the global competitiveness in Bahrain:
Factor Conditions in Bahrain
The nation’s relative

Bahrain is located at the heart of the Gulf Cooperation Council GCC market, which makes Bahrain the most suitable location to meet the increasing demand of GCC countries for manufactured goods (Cho & et al, 2013).
For example: inexpensive housing much in demand: there is considerable demand for affordable housing.
For example; huge pressure from abroad on the shipping and export companies in Bahrain because of Bahrain 's strategic location in land, air and sea freight.
Related & Supporting Industries in Bahrain
The presence or absence in the Bahrain of globally competitive supplier and related industries is a key factor. There are some industries in Bahrain which supports the natural gas, aluminum, timber, construction equipment and petroleum production (Cho & et al, 2013).
For example; Natural gas in Bahrain supports gas companies instead of asking gas from neighboring countries. Moreover, lots of gas cylinder companies have flourished in the country as NADAR Co. and ALHASSANIN Co. For example; ALBA factory provides aluminum for companies in Bahrain, in order these companies will not ask for aluminum from foreign countries.

Firm Strategy, Structure & Rivalry in

To attract and retain foreign direct investments that the government of Bahrain should adopt;
The government of Bahrain should adopt the Capital Control Policy
What are capital controls? And why they are essential? Capital control refers to measures taken by a government or the central bank to enclose the inflow and outflow of foreign capital in and out of a country (OU, 2010).
However, the global capital flows are critical for Bahrain because it is small nation; so in Bahrain the economy is open and no need to impose complex capital controls. The benefits of Capital Controls Policy is to control the inflow and outflow of foreign capital, the government and the central bank of Bahrain bring measures like imposition of taxes on the flows, restricting the quantity of foreign currency purchase, and bringing legitimate measures to limit foreign currency dealings. The objective of capital control is to limit the instabilities created by capital flows (Moon & et al, 2013) (J. Smith,