The kingdom has no plans to change its interest rates which are in line with economic activity, the state news agency BNA reported Rasheed al-Maraj as saying.
Maraj said there was no truth to “rumours” that international banks had left after the “recent regrettable events.”
“The (central) bank has issued eight licences (for new financial institutions) since the beginning of the year and we deal with any request that meets the required conditions without delay,” Maraj said.
At least two dozen people were killed including protesters and security personnel and hundreds were arrested during the unrest, which started in February.
Bahrain’s Sunni rulers have said the unrest was mostly the work of Shia protesters pushing a sectarian agenda, backed by Shia Iran.
Analysts in a Reuters poll slashed Bahrain’s 2011 growth outlook in June for the second time in a row, to a median 2.7% from 3.4% following its worst civil unrest since the 1990s, making the non-Opec oil producer the worst performer in the region.
Bahrain is the only Gulf state projected to see a budget deficit in 2011 – unchanged from the previous forecast at 1.4% of GDP, the poll showed.
Maraj said that the central bank’s reserves of gold and hard currencies rose 11.5% to 1.7bn dinars ($ 4.5bn) at the end of April from 1.53bn dinars at the end of March.
Earlier in June, King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa approved a $ 16.44bn budget for the next two years – a 44% rise in spending on subsidies and other public expenditures.
Bahrain has set its repo rate and one-week deposit rate at 2.25% and 0.5% respectively, which were last cut in September 2009.
