331 industrial licences registered in Oman in 2018

Muscat: The Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MoCI) said that the number of industrial licences registered through the "Invest Easy" portal between January and December 2018 end reached 331. It was just 140 in 2017. Engineer Hamad bin Saeed Al Mamari, acting head of industrial registrations at the MoCI, said that the increase in the number of licences in 2018 over 2017 was due to the fact that many investors got it done through the "Invest Easy" portal. The industrial licencing services were being provided online to make the business and industrial work easy in the Sultanate. This facility has saved time and efforts. This approach will help make the country a commercial and investment hub. Al Mamari said that industrial projects with investments between OMR5,000 to OMR50,000 registered in 2018 were 12, compared with just six in 2017. Projects with investments between OMR50,000 and OMR100,000 registered in 2018 were four. The number was the same in 2017. Industrial projects with investments between OMR100,000 and OMR500,000 registered in 2018 were six, compared with seven in 2017. There were 309 industrial licences given to projects with investments more than OMR500,000, compared with just 123 in 2017. The process of approval for industrial licencing starts with submitting the application through the "Invest Easy" portal. It is verified in terms of plant location, activities, products, production capacity, equipment, tools, units of measurement and the name of the establishment. After that, the feasibility study of the project is also seen. Similarly, there are certain organisations related to the process of industrial licencing. The approval of the applications takes not more than 30 days. Only then is the industrial licence given, which is a final licence with three years validity. When the investor implements the project and starts working on it, he updates the data with the date of the start of actual production. For this, a licence renewal form is used. After that, experts visit the factory or industry to confirm the details of the production provided to them, he said. The industrial sector is the top economic priority of countries as a key for economic development. The Sultanate also relies on this sector to diversify its sources of national income. The government is giving priority to the industrial sector and providing incentives and facilities to make it an essential pillar of the national economy and a major source of income.