Saturday 26 / October / 2024
Muscat: The Public Authority for Special Economic Zones and Free Zones (Opaz), overseeing 21 affiliated zones, including 8 under development, in a total area exceeding 2,200 km2 and providing employment to 74,000 workers continues to enhance Oman's industrial infrastructure capacity.
Keeping this in mind Opaz has made tremendous efforts to unify the legislative system and complete the law on special economic zones and free zones. It is also restructuring the procedures of the one-stop shop in Duqm, and implementing the one-stop experience in the zones supervised by Opaz to issue all approvals, licenses and certificates in 2022.
In addition to Opaz efforts have been made in the digital transformation through several applications to facilitate and accelerate investors’ services and activate an access system for document control. Thus, Opaz has decided to stop receiving paper transactions by the end of next June, except for some government correspondences.
These initiatives were highlighted by senior officials of Opaz at its annual media briefing on Sunday.
Speaking about financial sustainability, Opaz was able to reprogramme the financing agreements and provide financing coverage for many infrastructure projects with a total of OMR46 million without the need to refer to the government’s treasury. It is also working to benefit from the savings of financing agreements after completing some infrastructure projects with a maximum of up to OMR50 million by using old loans instead of getting new loans in the meantime. This will assist in covering urgent projects, which include lifestyle development, as well as projects related to enabling Sezad to provide infrastructure services for the renewable energy sector.
With regards to the institutional transformation, Opaz contracted with a specialised Irish house of expertise, and it received the first report in March, which specified institutional transformation procedures to activate Opaz's role and hone its capabilities and its employees to attract more local and foreign investments.
Regarding renewable energy uses and the production of green hydrogen, Opaz signed with two companies that specialised in producing green hydrogen, namely the Hyport Company and Acme Company. As well, Opaz is studying other requests for renewable energy projects in coordination with the Ministry of Energy and Minerals, so that these projects use Duqm to provide green ammonia products and attract mining projects that use renewable energy.
Moreover, Opaz is currently coordinating with the Public Services Regulatory Authority and the Electricity Transmission Company to develop a mechanism for approving certificates for the use of renewable energy for factories operating in the Salalah Free Zone to enable them to export green products using part of the wind energy that is generated from Harweel field and transferred to Salalah.
Opaz also signed three memorandums of understanding to establish mineral projects in the Special Economic Zone at Duqm with each of the Jindal Shadeed Company, the Japanese Mitsui Company and Kobe Steel. These companies use natural gas in manufacturing operations at the beginning and will use green hydrogen in the future to produce green iron. Soon, we will announce another mining project in the Port of Duqm in the Special Economic Zone at Duqm.
Regarding the pharmaceutical industries, the construction works of Felix Pharmaceutical Industries factory in Salalah Free Zone were completed in 2022 and started production and it was officially opened in January 2023. This factory marks a new addition to the pharmaceutical and medical industries in the Sultanate of Oman. Likewise, Salalah Free Zone, Sohar Free Zone and Raysut Industrial Zone stand all as attractive hubs for the pharmaceutical and medical materials industries, in addition to the targeted sub-sectors in those zones. Opaz is promoting these zones to attract more medical and veterinary industries.
“We are proud of the employees working in Opaz, the economic zones and the various free zones and industrial cities who work with each other in an integrated manner,” the Opaz official said.
Highlighting the performance indicators of Opaz affiliated zones for 2022 the official said that the total volume of investment in the Special Economic Zone at Duqm until December 2022 amounted to OMR3.6 billion. The total number of manpower is 18,624 and bringing the Omanisation rate to 17.2 per cent.
The total volume of investment in the Sohar Free Zone reached OMR462 million until December 2022. The total number of manpower is 2,556 and bringing the Omanisation rate to 44 per cent.
The pace of growth continues in Salalah Free Zone, as the total volume of investment reached OMR3.8 billion in 2022. The total number of manpower is 2,490 and bringing the Omanisation rate to 38 per cent.
Al Mazunah Free Zone is the first free zone in the Sultanate of Oman. The total volume of investment reached OMR138 million until December 2022. The total number of manpower is 726 and bringing the Omanisation rate to 14 per cent.
