Wednesday 24 / April / 2024
Muscat: Oman plans to target over OMR200 million worth of investments, across 50 new projects that will be launched to strengthen the country’s industrial sector, as well as create new job opportunities for people.
The ceremony announcing these projects will be virtually unveiled on Monday, May 31, under the auspices of Qais bin Mohammed bin Musa Al Youssef, the Minister of Commerce, Industry, and Investment Promotion (MoCIIP).
The new investment opportunities are expected to attract potential investments of more than OMR200 million in the industrial sector across the governorates of the Sultanate. This, in turn, will help to raise the contribution of manufacturing sector towards the gross domestic product (GDP) of the country. The contributions of the industrial sector until September 2020 have exceeded OMR4.11 billion, said MoCIIP in a statement.
Furthermore, manufacturing companies listed on the Muscat Stock Exchange (MSX) contributed towards 25 per cent of the shares traded on the bourse in January 2021. The value of non-oil commodity exports in 2019 also rose from OMR3.17bn in 2017, to OMR3.23bn.
The upcoming action plan is compatible with Oman’s Vision 2040, said Sami bin Salim Al Sahib, Director General of Industry at MoCIIP.
“The Vision 2040 document aims at diversification and enhancing the economic growth, creating new job opportunities, raising Oman’s ranking in international indicators, strengthening the local value added, promoting foreign direct investment (FDI), achieving balanced development across the governorates of the Sultanate and enhancing the country’s exports,” he added.
Al Sahib clarified that the setting of these new investment opportunities comes in line with the ministry’s direction towards developing the industrial sector by enabling the investors to grab the potential industrial investment opportunities with economic feasibility.
The MoCIIP will include the target of creating industrial investment opportunities in its annual plans in cooperation with our partners in the public and private sectors, he added. The methodology used to set up the new investment opportunities includes several stages.
“The first phase is to define priorities for the required opportunities in the sectors targeted by the manufacturing strategy, the second phase includes the preparing of preliminary feasibility studies for the new opportunities and to present them to the potential investors, while the third phase is to cooperate with investors to conduct final feasibility studies for each project,” he further added.
Al Sahib pointed out that the disclosed investment opportunities are in various fields in the industrial sector.
These include the mining activities, quarrying, food products, paper products, chemical products, rubber and plastics products, non-metallic products, base metals, the manufacturing of formed mineral products except for machinery, electrical equipment, machinery and equipment manufacturing, transportation equipment manufacturing, waste collection, treatment, disposal and material recovery activities.
Additional investment opportunities are also available in HVAC assembly plant in the construction field and establishing a Centre of Excellence for Food Industries.
“Presenting these initiatives, the Ministry aims at facilitating procedures for the investors, attracting high quality investments in sectors that can enhance the economic diversification, creating an appropriate environment for the success and development of all investments,” Al Sahib added.
