The MSX30 Index ended the week down by 0.03 per cent. The Industrial and services sectors ended in green up by 2.9 per cent and 1.1 per cent respectively, while the financial sector closed in the red i.e. down by 0.34 per cent. The MSX Shariah Index was higher by 0.61 per cent.
Oman implemented Value Added Tax (VAT) last week on April 16, 2021. The VAT is expected to raise about 400 million Omani riyals annually and to generate approximately 1.5 per cent of the value of GDP.
The 5 per cent tax will be imposed on most goods and services, with the exemption of a specific set of goods and services, rendered to consumers at outlets throughout the Sultanate. It will also be imposed on imports of goods to the Sultanate, except the ones exempted by law.
The list of goods and services exempted from the VAT includes healthcare, education, financial services, and basic food items and supplies for persons with special needs, among other items and services.
Al Hassan Engineering has announced an award of new project with Strategic and Precious Metals Processing FZC LLC valued at approximately RO 1.04 million.
The execution period will be 6 months starting from April 2021. The company expects reasonable profit from this project.
A new food processing cluster, anchored by a flour mill, is being established in Salalah Free Zone — the latest in a series of food hubs in various stages of planning and implementation across the Sultanate.
The food sector is one of the fastest growing industries in the Sultanate — its growth powered partly by the government’s aggressive quest to secure the country’s basic food requirements, and partly by the development of a wider ecosystem that, along with Agro, fish and livestock processing, is fuelling new investments into this rapidly expanding segment of the Omani economy.
Corporates in MSX announced their results for 1Q21. At the time of preparation of this report only 63 companies with year-end in December announced the results. As of 1Q21, total market profitability stood at RO 92 million compared to RO 26 million in 4Q20 and RO 55.2 million in 1Q20.
Financial sector net income stood at RO 74.3 million, followed by Industrial at RO 15 million and Services at RO 2.6 million. We have seen good recovery in industrial and service sector profitability compared to fourth quarter of 2020.
The total number of guests in hotel properties of the 3 to 5-star category in the Sultanate fell 47.2 per cent to 169,465 in February 2021, compared to 320,816 guests for the same period of 2020. Meanwhile, the occupancy rate slumped to 49.7 per cent, according to the latest monthly statistics released by the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI).
Total revenues of these hotels also fell to RO 6.515 million in February 2021, compared to RO 23.350 million during the same period of the previous year.
The inflation rate in the Sultanate, measured by movement in the average Consumer Price Index (CPI), fell by 0.37 per cent in March 2021 compared to the same month of 2020, according to the latest data released by the (NCSI) on consumer prices’ index. According to the report, the inflation rate in March increased by 0.50 per cent compared to February 2021.
However, the transport increased by 3.22 per cent; restaurants and hotels group by 0.01 per cent, miscellaneous goods and services by 0.11 per cent, clothing & footwear by 0.05 per cent, while the prices of the rest of the main groups were stable.
[Courtesy: U-Capital]
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