Oman mulls role in Belarus industrial park: Report

27/08/2015 08:05 AST

The Sultanate is weighing the possibility of taking part in a joint Chinese-Belarusian industrial park initiative, dubbed ‘Great Stone’, according to a report in the Belarusian media on Tuesday.

The publication of the report coincided with the start of the first session of the Belarus-Oman Business Council. An Omani business delegation, headed by Qais bin Mohammed al Yousef, Chairman of the Economic Committee of the Oman Chamber of Commerce & Industry (OCCI), is in attendance at the session.

The report quoted Mikhail Myatlikov, Chairman of the Belarusian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (BelCCI), as saying thus: “Representatives of the companies, which are ready to invest, are represented on the Omani delegation. We have run the presentations they are interested in past them.

The Omani delegation is interested in learning about business operation terms in the China-Belarus Industrial Park for the sake of possibly taking part in the park’s future work.” The BelCCI head recalled that the agreement to set up the Belarus-Oman Business Council was signed way back in 2010, but the first session has been scheduled only this week.

“Representatives of the companies, which are considering buying our products and selling them in their own region, have arrived in Belarus. If we look at Belarus-Oman export and import statistics, we will see that Oman exports oil and oil products and pressurized gas. It always considers buying food and mechanical engineering products,” explained the official. According to the Chairman of the Belarusian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, presentations of Belarus’ investment climate and Belarusian exporters are being arranged during the session of the Belarus-Oman Business Council.

Tours of Belarusian mechanical engineering enterprises will also be arranged for the sake of getting the Omani side familiar with their products. Negotiations with the executives regarding possible trade contracts will be organised.

“Oman’s geographical position allows Belarus to work not only with Oman, which population is lower than ours, but also allows to consider Oman taking into account the port infrastructure for the sake of selling merchandise across the entire Arabian Peninsula region,” stressed Mikhail Myatlikov.

The report also quoted Qais bin Mohammed al Yousef as stating that the main purpose of the visit to Belarus was to find the most promising avenues to expand Belarus-Oman trade and economic cooperation.

“As far as Oman’s investment activities are concerned, we are now implementing a number of projects that may be interesting. One of the projects is related to the establishment of the largest logistics centre in our region.

If we talk about Oman’s investments in Belarus, good perspectives can be seen primarily in such areas as heavy industry and petrochemical industry,” he remarked.

Oman Daily Observer