Bahrain's unique business environment, dominated by family businesses and a thriving banking sector, ensures top-level executives draw higher salaries than their junior employees, an expert says.

"Family businesses are important to Bahrain. They're also changing and becoming more professional," said Hay Group Middle East unit manager Harish Bhatia.

Top-level executives hired by modernising family businesses enjoy higher pay packages, thus widening the gap between the two management levels.

The country's thrust area of banking also ensures the continuing disparity, he added.

"The gap has widened across the GCC. It is a little more in Bahrain," he said.

"In the oil and gas industry, the curve of growth allows for higher pay for those at the top-level as well as for technicians."

Findings by the Dubai-based global management consultancy report that pay ratios of the GCC countries range between those of Western and emerging markets.

The gap between top- and junior-level executives in Bahrain increased by almost 25 per cent in the last four years, the report stated.

A comparatively low cost of living in the GCC region also adds to the widening pay gap.

Middle-level managers are paid according to international rates while junior employees are compensated according to prevailing local costs of living, the report said.

However, the disparity has not resulted in resentment among staff, Mr Bhatia told the GDN.

"The trend is typically because of the demand and supply situation," he said.

"There could be more demand for top-level executives or scarcity of mid-level jobs or companies might be wrapping up the mid-level jobs. It is not a positive or negative trend," he added.

Bahraini companies need to adopt efficient strategies to close this gap, he said.

"They should work with market dynamics and reward based on performance rather than fixed pay," he added.