Tuesday 23 / April / 2024
Muscat: The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion will, on May 1, 2023, start implementing Ministerial Resolution No. (45/2023), considering the Gulf standard specification of technical requirements for electric vehicles as a binding Omani standard specification.
The Ministry stated that this will be done by obligating manufacturers and importers to submit a certificate of conformity approved by the Gulf Standardisation Organization as a condition for the release of new electric vehicles. This is in order to verify that the companies that manufacture electric vehicles have applied the technical regulations for this product.
Engineer Yaqoub bin Saleh Al-Saadi, a mechanical engineer in the Compliance Department of the General Directorate of Standards and Metrology at the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion, said: "The application of this standard comes with the aim of creating a new sector for electric car spare parts, maintenance services workshops, skilled national labour, advanced technology, vehicle charging stations, opportunities to localise modern industries and strengthen supply chains."
Al-Saadi added that the standard supports the transition from vehicles powered by fossil fuels to reliance on new and renewable energy, in a way that serves the trend towards a green economy and keeps pace with the country's efforts and policies aimed at reducing carbon emissions that arise from fuel combustion, to achieve zero carbon neutrality.
Additionally, Al-Saadi pointed out that the societal objective of the standard is to determine the safety of the technical requirements of electric vehicles for the safety of the driver and passengers by reducing accidents, deaths and electric shocks that can result due to leakage of electricity from batteries, and leakage of battery components in the passenger compartment.
