Oman's Ministry of Commerce and Industry awards training contract to GCC agency

Muscat: A consultancy contract to conduct a study on the policies and opportunities to hire Omani workers was awarded to Gulf Organisation for Industrial Consulting (GOIC) by the Sultanate’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry. The study will enable citizens to get into the labour market and improve the employment levels in the industrial and other sectors.Therefore, the general framework of the study included presenting the major developments of the Sultanate national economy and the programmes and policies of financing investments, which were adopted earlier. The study will also shed light on the legislations that organise the labour market and analyse its indicators, and the institutional and organisational framework to train and hire the national labour force, also the jobs where the national labour force are to be hired were pointed out to, in addition to the role of each the private and national sector in employment. The labour market in the Omani private sector faces some challenges that sometimes reduce the citizens participation efficiently within, and hinders their entrance to the labour market and start working or establishing individual projects in many economic sectors including the industrial sector; therefore, we must overcome these challenges by qualifying the citizens and providing the proper environment for them to search for the available opportunities and benefit from it, also to motivate them to start individual initiatives and encourage them to work in all the fields of the private sector. The study showed that in order to reach the indicators of the labour market and the policies of employment in the industrial sector, there must be a study of the components and details of the labor market, also the specifications of the laborers in general in order to determine the share of the private sector, and getting known to the provided jobs and specialties to determine the number of careers serving the industrial sector; also keening on benefit from the data and analyses reached during the comprehensive analysis of the labour market the study wasn’t only about the industrial sector but also it presented the analyses reached during the research phases. This study aims at achieving three main targets which are: getting well known to the reality of the economic sectors, especially the industrial one, discovering opportunities and new investment fields that can draw the national labor force, determining the needs and the academic and career required specialties, determining the potential of the labor force to meet, determining the required percent of Omanisation in the economic activities especially in the industrial sector. The study discussed a group of phenomena and data in the Omani labour market, represented in the drop of the citizens participation on the labor market especially in the activities of the private sector, and the urgent need to allow the citizens and those who seek to work to overcome the obstacles and the challenges that prevent them from entering the labor market, also the need to reconsidering the Omanisation percent accredited by the Sultanate, to increase the settlements of jobs in the private sector, all this in the shadow of developments in the labour market, and presenting investment fields and opportunities that can contribute hiring the national labor force. The study methodology depended on the descriptive method and statistical analysis on the field visits, interviews, and the statistical data from its sources, and despite giving special importance to the industrial field, the study wasn’t all about it, especially to the things related to reality, economic policies, and the policies of the labor market. Depending on that the study presented a group of recommendations represented in policies and procedures that can contribute providing new jobs for job-seekers in all the economic sectors including the industrial one, reducing obstacles that stand between entering the national labor force the labor market. In addition to encouraging job-seekers to benefit from the economic activities of the private sector, which will increase the employment rates and provide job opportunities for citizens in pioneering economic sectors. Add to that, putting systems to encourage the commercial banks to expand its circle of financing the individual industrial projects, in order to meet the financial needs of the small and medium projects, raise the capacity of development bank loans, and to work on providing the financial support for trainers and entrepreneurs during the training period, so that they will be hired by the end of the training period. In order to motivate the private sector increasing the rates of hiring citizens, there was a suggestion of reviewing the accredited Omansation percent especially in the industrial sector. Furthermore, in order to motivate the experience of the citizens in the field of research, they considered engaging researchers from the ministry in the preparation of this study, as they did distinguished efforts in communication, coordination and providing the required data and information.