MoCIIP begins annual survey of industrial establishments for the year 2023

Muscat: The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion will begin tomorrow, Sunday, implementing the annual survey of industrial establishments for the year 2023.

The survey targets more than 1,600 industrial facilities in various industrial zones in the governorates and states of the Sultanate of Oman, in cooperation with the Public Authority for Special Economic Zones and Free Zones, through the electronic industrial survey system, compared to the survey that was implemented in 2022, which targeted 952 industrial facilities, an increase of 43 percent.

The survey comes within the efforts of the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion towards digital transformation, which facilitates the work of industrial establishments in delivering, collecting, reviewing and analyzing data to build targets.

Dr. Ahmed bin Khalfan Al Badawi, Director of the Industrial Strategy Implementation and Evaluation Department at the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion, said that the survey is an initiative of the industrial strategy outputs, which relies in its plans on obtaining accurate statistics on the reality of the industrial sector in the Sultanate of Oman.

He explained that industrial information works to improve performance monitoring mechanisms and build a knowledge economy and make it a starting point for corrective actions for establishments to achieve realistic growth rates and adopt modern technologies in the industrial sector and link statistics to the main performance indicators of the ministry in everything related to the entire industrial sector and related entities.

He added that the annual surveys of industrial establishments are an essential part of an integrated system of national industrial statistics that provides information about establishments and their activities for industrial establishments operating and licensed on the Oman Business Platform whose investment cost exceeds 5,000 Omani riyals and whose workforce exceeds 9 workers.

For her part, Ibtisam bint Mohammed Al-Alawi, Head of the Industrial Analysis Department at the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion, explained that implementing the annual industrial survey aims to provide a modern, comprehensive and accurate database for industrial establishments and to create advanced indicators to monitor and measure the sector’s performance; which contributes to identifying investment opportunities, raising the percentage of local content in the industrial sector and setting development plans, policies and programs that serve development and the public interest to achieve economic diversification and activate non-oil sectors.

For her part, Zakia bint Mohammed Al Balushi, Director of the Planning and Studies Department at the Public Authority for Special Economic Zones and Free Zones, stressed that the industrial survey is an essential tool for evaluating financial and production performance and building accurate indicators of economic activities for the entire industrial sector, such as gross domestic product, economic growth and employment levels, which contribute to formulating effective development policies.

She stressed the importance of indicators in sustainable planning and setting priorities to achieve comprehensive development through the role of the manufacturing sector, which is a fundamental pillar of the Omani economy, as its contribution to the gross domestic product for the year 2022 amounted to about 4.4 billion Omani riyals, 60 percent of which comes from the areas under the supervision of the Authority.

The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion is working through the outputs of the industrial survey to launch the Industrial Observatory System, which will provide an integrated database of information and services related to manufacturing industries, calling on industrial establishments covered by the survey to submit their industrial data during the period from December 1 to 31, 2024.