Wednesday 03 / July / 2024
Muscat: The Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI) said that the number of commercial agencies, which submitted their applications through the “Invest Easy” portal between January 1 and December end in 2018 reached 8,807. They were 631 new commercial agencies, 68 updated or modified commercial agencies, 1,514 renewed commercial agencies and 6,594 cancelled commercial agencies.
Yaqoub Bin Shaikh Al Dhabouni, Head of Commercial Agencies at the MoCI, said: "The service provided through the 'Invest Easy' portal was to make the registration and follow up process easy for investors."
It is important to comply with the requirements of obtaining a commercial agency certificate. For this, a commercial agency contract should be free of any write-off, addition or modification. It has to be duly certified by the competent authority in that country and the Sultanate's embassy there, or certified by the Apostille of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the client's country, Al Dabouni said.
The commercial agency contract should include the name, address and nationality of both the agent and the client and the goods manufactured by the agent indicating the international harmonised system (HS) code, its trade name and logo, if any. If there is an agreement between the supplier, the photocopy of the agreement between the supplier and the agency has to be attached. It should also show the territories of the Sultanate where the products would be distributed.
The agreements should also describe the rights and obligations of both the agency and the client and the country where any dispute would be solved, if there is any. It should also mention the validity of the agency, method of renewal, automatic or with the approval of the parties, geographic limits of the agency and all other elements of the agreement of the parties.
When applying for a licence for a commercial agency, the application form used for the registration has to be filled by attaching the original contract, its photocopy, its accredited translation into Arabic, and a copy of the membership card of the Oman Chamber of Commerce and Industry. In case the commercial agent (company) wants to include import as part of its activities, at the time of amendment, addition or deletion of any clause of the agreement, its application has to be signed by all the parties and approved, he said.
Al Dabouni said that the removal of commercial agencies, which already expired three months ago through the "Invest Easy" portal, was the implementation of Articles 15 and 17 of the Commercial Agencies Law issued under the Royal Decree No. 26/77. It helps in saving commercial agencies from paying late fines and making their presence legal in the Sultanate.
Al Dabouni said that whosoever submits an application for a commercial agency licence via self-service must first ascertain that the data entered was correct, before paying the fees. This is because if there are mistakes in the application, the investor will bear the responsibility of the amounts paid in case of rejection of the application.
The experts in the MoCI do not have the authority to make changes in the application.
He said that transactions should be completed through the Sanad offices as the best way because the ministry has given them the authority.
