Muscat: Oman’s tourism master plan, formulated under the National Programme for Enhancing Economic Diversification, or Tanfeedh, moved a step ahead with the Ministry of Tourism and the Tanfeedh Delivery Unit announcing they will initiate all 15 projects immediately.
The decision came at the first session since Tanfeedh held its ‘open days’ initiative.
Currently, both manufacturing and tourism sectors have launched the fourth ‘roadmap’ stage, where concerned participants at the labs will come up with a clear and concise implementation plan to be shared with the public and stakeholders. The results will be released in the form of a ‘handbook’ sometime during the first quarter of 2017.
This stage of the Tanfeedh programme follows the six-week lab sessions, which produced a detailed analysis of 15 tourism initiatives.
These projects were made public through the ‘open days’ confabulations which enabled Oman’s society to consider the programmes and vote ‘remain’ for these.
The Ministry of Tourism has confirmed that the initiatives have been shared with the Ministry of Finance, and eight of the 15 will require public funding.
According to Maitha Al Mahrouqi, undersecretary at the Ministry of Tourism, vigilance and hard work is required and nothing less will be tolerated.
“We will be starting 2017 with another challenge, working on Tanfeedh. The team from Malaysia is here to help, if needed. Be patient and stay focussed. We will be spending this year focussing on the fundamental executions required to continue this programme,” Maitha said.
“This is a platform to prove that the private and public sector can work together,” she added. The session gave detailed descriptions of the lab initiatives as well as the roles and responsibilities of the participants.