The Central Bank of Bahrain will offer the digital Dinar through a digital payments platform that can be accessed round the clock.
The central bank also intends to gradually raise the share of financing for small- and medium-sized enterprises to 20 percent of the financial portfolios of local banks by the end of 2025.
Bahrain plans to list five more companies on its stock exchange next year including Bahrain Airport Services Company,
Bahrain has been preparing to introduce a digital currency for a while now, and as part of her membership at the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) Digital Currency Governance Consortium (DCGC), Director of FinTech & Innovation Unit at the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB) Yasmeen Al-Sharaf, has contributed in the preparation and review of two whitepapers published by WEF as a part of a series of whitepapers composed of eight parts, exploring a number of critical topics relating to Central Bank Digital Currencies (“CBDC’s”) and stablecoins.
As a member of WEF’s Digital Currency Governance Consortium, Ms. Al-Sharaf has participated in a series of virtual workshops and roundtables over the course of 2020-2021 to address key questions and governance gaps relating to digital currencies, which led to the publication of the whitepapers. The CBB’s participation aims at benefiting from sharing experience and views and enhancing knowledge of this emerging field.
The series of whitepapers published by WEF aim to inform policy-makers, digital currency issuers, financial and civil society organizations and other stakeholders on the capabilities, risks and the available policy and technology choices with respect to CBDC’s and stablecoins.
The whitepapers contributed by Ms. Al-Sharaf, explore the potential role that central banks and public institutions could take with respect to CBDC’s and stablecoins, highlighting key opportunities for public-private and intergovernmental cooperation and the policy gaps and inconsistencies from existing approaches towards retail CBDC’s and stablecoins and provides an initial framework for policy-makers to address these gaps and inconsistencies.
The CBB continues to support the development of its workforce, including participation in such international forums, in the light of increasing developments in the financial sector.