Bahrain sure to be a subsidy free country

Muhammad Azam/DTNN

azam@dt.bh

Manama

Sooner or later Bahrain is going to be a subsidy free country, Chairman Parliamentary Committee on Financial and Economic Affairs Isa Al Kooheji said in an exclusive interview with the DT News yesterday at the Parliament House. “At one point of time there will be no subsidy in the Kingdom of Bahrain,” said Mr. Kooheji.

He said that he could not say whether it would take five years or fifteen years but he was sure that at a certain time, all the subsidies would definitely be removed from the face of Bahrain.

Mr. Kooheji said

“Let everybody have a clear understanding that Bahrain is going to be a subsidy free country. But we want to have a true and honest picture of how the subsidies are going to look like in future,” he added.

How the common worker with BD100 earnings per month will manage his budget in the subsidy free Bahrain?

Mr. Kooheji said that there was going to be some sort of effect but the thing is “in our budget today 300 billion dinars are allocated for subsidies alone.”

He said that that was a very big amount; they will have to reduce it. He said that they had to get the right quality of goods for the right price so slowly but eventually it would surely happen.  “We cannot do it all at once, but should be done step by step,” he stressed.

He said that the government had a plan for subsidies but what they wanted was to bring all the subsidies together and not to single out an individual type of subsidy.

Mr. Kooheji said that once they got full picture from the government how the subsidies were going to look like in future then they could be able to work with them to come out with proper understanding and timeline about the reduction of subsidies and see how much savings they could do at the same time.