Manama is the most financially attractive city to live in the world. The index, which ranks 150 of the top global locations according to financial attractiveness and lifestyle attractiveness, is dominated by countries from the GCC. It combines local salary levels, tax rates, living costs, and living conditions to assess how appealing each location is to live in. Manama took the top spot, Riyadh took fourth place, Kuwait City was sixth and Abu Dhabi was seventh. Dubai was listed in 12th and Muscat in 16th.
GCC economies have invested considerable sums in making themselves more attractive to international businesses in line with ambitious region-wide economic diversification efforts. As the first GCC member to begin diversification, the Kingdom of Bahrain offers one of the easiest and most cost-effective environments to set up and operate a business in the world. Businesses operating in the Kingdom enjoy 0 percent tax and 100 percent foreign ownership allowed. Bahrain was recently named the fourth most improved economy in the world by the World Bank’s latest Ease of Doing Business report. As well as ranking first in the world for financial attractiveness in the AIRINC index, Manama also jumped 15 places for overall attractiveness, to 48th.