Mr. Ahmed Macki, Minister of National Economy had a successful visit to India in the middle of July 2010. During the three-day hectic schedule, both countries signed an ambitious Oman-India Joint Investment Fund and the visiting Minister interacted with India’s chambers- CII and FICCI apart from donating precious books to the Sultan Qaboos Library in India Islamic Cultural Centre in New Delhi.

The State Bank of India (SBI) and State General Reserve Fund (SGRF) of Oman signed a Joint Venture Agreement to form a Joint Investment Fund. The Agreement was signed by Mr. O.P. Bhatt, Chairman, SBI and Mr. Warith Al-Kharusi, CEO of SGRF) in the presence of Mr. Ahmed Macki, Minister of National Economy, Government of Oman and India’s Finance Minister, Mr. Pranab Mukherjee. The Oman-India Joint Investment Fund shall aim at making equity investments in various sectors of Indian economy.

This fund will start with a corpus of US$ 100 million to be contributed equally by State General Reserve Fund of Oman (SGRF) and SBI. The fund will explore opportunity in all sectors without any specific preference. The Fund would, for the present, limit itself to Indian investment opportunities. There is no specific sector focus and the Fund will look for opportunities in all sectors of India permitted by regulations from time to time. The Fund can be expanded to have a corpus of upto US$ 1.5 billion through future schemes, depending upon the experience of the initial fund. The purpose of the collaboration is to attract capital into India from that region.

The management company shall be owned 50:50 by SBI and SGRF, with equal profit sharing by both sides.

During the visit of Prime Minister of India, Dr. Manmohan Singh to Muscat in November 2008, an MoU was signed between the SBI and SGRF to set up a Joint Investment Fund to make equity investments in various sectors of both the countries.
“India offers a very large and promising market to Oman and the joint investment fund signed between the two governments will help both our nations to guarantee capital for investment projects”. This was stated Minister Macki at a meeting organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII). The Minister also mentioned that the synergies between India and Oman - democratic in nature, politically stable and steady economic growth - provide a good platform for enhancing bilateral economic and trade relations.
H. E. Mr. Humaid Al- Mani, Ambassador of Oman to India, stated that Indian and Omani business communities should continue to work together to take the bilateral relationship to newer heights.

Mr. Anil Wadhwa, Ambassador of India to the Sultanate of Oman, highlighted the momentum in both the bilateral trade and investments in the recent years. He further stated that despite the recession of last year the bilateral trade has crossed US$ 2.5 billion. “While petrochemicals sector have always been an integral part of our bilateral trade, there is a strong need to diversify and look at new areas of cooperation like ceramics, automobile components and others”.

Earlier, during the welcome remarks, Mr V K Mathur, Chairman & Managing Director, Inapex Limited complimented the Minister and his team for the agreement signed between the State Bank of India and State General Reserve Fund of Oman to form the Joint Investment Fund between India and Oman. He said that this fund with a seed capital of US$ 100 million, equally shared between both the countries, will provide a greater fillip to bilateral trade and investment relations between India and Oman, in the years to come. He added that sectors like solar energy, telecom, education, healthcare, water, mining, manufacturing etc have great potential and partnerships should be forged in these sectors.
Interacting with business community at Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), Minister Macki declared that encouraging and attracting foreign direct investment was a top priority in the country’s diversification strategy, not only to attract more investments, but also to introduce technical knowhow, modern management, advanced marketing techniques as well as on-the-job training to improve the skills of the Omani labour force.

Mr. Macki said that sound amendments in investment related laws and procedures have been introduced to make the investment atmosphere more conducive and attractive, especially as regards securing foreign ownership up to 100% and a tax rate reduced to 12%, one of the lowest in the region. This investment atmosphere has already attracted foreign investments which had increased, according to the last investment survey, from (RO 3,961) ($ 10, 299) million in 2005 to (RO 9,424) ($24, 502) million in 2007.

To provide the best environment for business and investment, the Omani Minister said that the government had formulated a detailed plan to expand and modernize the existing Muscat International Airport, Salalah Airport, as well as four other domestic airports, to be built in Sohar, Duqm, Adam, ras Al Hadd, and two smaller airports in Haima and Shaleem, being included in this year development budget amounting to (RO 950) ($ 2, 470) million.

He said that the government had allocated huge additional development funds during the plan period for rehabilitating and building a network of physical infra-structure projects in different regions of the Sultanate. Those additions had amounted to (RO 6,665) ($ 17, 329) million, thus raising the development programme to (RO 9, 681) ($ 25, 171) million. The road sector has received a big share amounting to (RO 1, 777) ($ 4, 620) million of these additions and many roads have been built, and still others are to be built this year.
Also, the government was investing heavily in new water and power projects, with nearly (RO 3) ($ 7.8) billions allocated for projects planned over the next (6) years. Moreover, the plan investment programmes covers other sectors, such as tourism, information technology, and telecommunication.