Muscat: Oman in-country value (ICV) forum was organized by Al Roya newspaper on Wednesday under the theme of "Empowering Youth, Localizing Industries and Creating Opportunities”.
The forum seeks to pursue the process of enhancing ICV and impart its benefits to all development sectors. The opening ceremony was held under the auspices of Abdul Salam Mohammed al Murshidi, Chairman of Oman Investment Authority (OIA).
The OIA and its affiliate firms accord a great attention to ICV and enacted regulatory systems that guarantee the implementation of added value in tenders, procurements and projects, said Al Murshidi, noting that the OIA will digitise these regulations so that they could be enforced in a transparent manner.
Certain departments will be entrusted with continuously monitoring and assessing performance in this regard, he added.
Dr Saleh Said Massan, Commerce, Industry Under-Secretary, said that the forum is expected to come out with a roadmap to consolidate the concept of ICV, gaining impetus from the successful experience of oil, gas and petrochemical industries sectors.
He explained that the volume of growth of ICV in the industrial sector has crossed the RO 3.1 billion mark and that the contribution of non- petrochemical subsidiary sectors to industrialization stood at 38 per cent.
Abdulamir Abdulhussein al Ajmi, Director of External Affairs and Value Creation at Petroleum Development Oman (PDO), said that as many as 200 small and medium enterprises were registered in 2020 and that the value of associated contracts stood at RO 118 million.
The PDO encourages the retention of 34 per cent of ICV of national products and services within the country in 2020, Abdulamir said. The forum saw the launch of an initiative named "Tahfeez” (Incentivization), the first initiative dealing with goals of developing ICV.
Seven agreements and memorandums of cooperation were concluded within the context of rolling out a programme of employment-linked training. A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed by Oman Society for Petroleum Services (OPAL) and Seeh Al Sarya Engineering while three more MoUs were inked to train graduates of technical specializations on the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR) skills.
The MoUs include training at three ICT companies (from the category of small and medium enterprise) and to provide 12-month employment for ICT graduates in the field of ‘initial engineering designing’.
Two more MoUs were signed to enhance the skills of mechanical/electrical executives and to create employment for fresh graduates to replace expatriate manpower operating in mechanical and electrical fields.
Another MoU provides for the refurbishment of drivers’ skills. Towards this end, the PDO and OPAL will cooperate to train 100 drivers in different fields, so that they could access higher positions in future in the job scale. During the forum, the "Products and National Services Directory” was inaugurated. It covered a set of papers, among them one themed "ICV in Small and Medium Enterprise”, and another titled "2040 and Sustainability of ICV Programmes”, among other topics. -- ONA
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