As Bahrain’s economy has rebounded from its Covid-19 pandemic lows, the country’s banks have prospered. Higher oil prices and more supportive government spending helped to stimulate a recovery in non-oil activity in 2022, while improving consumer confidence boosted retail activity across the board.
Such trends have lifted the performance of Bahrain’s lenders over the past 12 months and restored their profitability metrics to levels last seen before the onset of the global pandemic. The return on equity of the country’s banking sector hit 4.6% in June 2022, tracking the 4.8% recorded in the same period in 2019, after slumping to 1.5% in June 2020, according to data from the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB).
