Top executives view further reforms and a planned revision of the national economic strategy as crucial to Bahrain’s long-term growth and prosperity, according to a survey.

Within this context, many government institutions, agencies and private businesses are looking at their internal reform agendas, the survey conducted by KPMG, a global audit, tax and advisory firm, said.

The survey on business priorities incorporates feedback from about 1,500 CFOs and CEOs across 22 European and Middle Eastern countries, including Bahrain.

It said government and regional investment are expected to have an immediate impact on Bahrain’s economic recovery.

Bahrain-based respondents, place a far greater emphasis on ‘addressing risk throughout the organisation’ (42 per cent compared to 30pc as a survey average), demonstrating the increasing emphasis on corporate governance and financial risk management, it said.

Most senior executives are now focusing on making their businesses fit for today, in preparation for growth going forward, according to the survey.

“Most are focusing on business performance management – aligning their cost base to their organisation’s future strategy and ensuring cash and working capital,” said KPMG in Bahrain’s head of advisory, Narayanan Ramachandran.

“The top priorities are ‘changing business operations to realise cost efficiencies’ (a priority for 51 per cent of senior executives), ‘improving cash and working capital management’ (42 per cent) and ‘preparing your organisation for major business model changes’ (33 per cent).”

“The majority of business leaders in Europe and the Middle East (64 per cent) agree that Europe’s position as a world economic and political superpower has peaked and that its importance will decline over coming years,” said Ramachandran.

Similar to their regional and European counterparts, many Bahrain business leaders place a high importance on ‘making better use of company data for more effective planning and forecasting, including ‘changing business operations to realize cost efficiencies’ – but perhaps for slightly different reasons, he said. – TradeArabia News Service