[oman-l] have any of you actually done business in oman?

[muscati]

It is very easy to write from a detached point of view about advantages and
disadvantages. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say. It is all well and good to
study the past and learn from its mistakes, after all those who don't learn
from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them.

The economic situation is really grave. We have been in a recession for the
past 12 years and no one wants to admit it. We are force fed economic
statistics that make absolutely no sense and are expected somehow to
believe them. For example  there  apparently is no inflation in oman. Maybe
that explains why wages are so low, huh? 

Ask any merchant how low his/her profit margins are. Ask how hard it is to
collect receivables. Ask if they can survive without the bank overdrafts
that further eat into the profit margin. Volumes are low because the
population is small, visitors are few. Commerce laws are complicated and
provide unnecessary burdens on traders. Large amounts of money are siphoned
outside of the economy and transfered abroad by foreign workers and foreign
merchants that operate in oman behind the scenes while their omani partners
ruin the economy for 50 rials a month. Tax laws are unfair to small
businesses and extremely lax on corporations. We promote foreign investment
and yet the foreign investment law still unfairly taxes foreign
corporations. We talk about tourism and the need for more hotels, but try
getting a visa to visit oman. Who are these tourists that we are talking
about? We complain about the effect Dubai has on our market, well why
didn't we take the initiative first and become the business hub that Dubai
has become. We are certainly better positioned geographically. 

The past two years the performance of the MSM has brainwashed us. Everyone
was so caught up in the frenzy. The Ministry of Commerce, the Central Bank,
the Ministry of Finance, and the Muscat Security Market watched as our
citizens mortgaged their houses and took loans to invest in the market.
Speculation was encouraged. People came for the quick buck and it worked
for a while. The market was sound, and still is, however it's investors
weren't. People bought only on the basis of rumors and hearsay. At the
first hints of a market correction people started to sell and now with the
market still at 60% higher than year ago levels people are convinced that
the market has collapsed. Banks are demanding repayment on their loans.
People sell their property to cover. Has any newspaper ever covered these
stories. Why are we so afraid of the truth?

This week 25,000 students are sitting their final exams. It has been
estimated that no more than 10% of them will find a place at SQU or get a
scholarship to go to college, or even pay their own way to college. Others
will go to local institutes and do simple two or three year courses that
vary in their quality from one local college to the next.  The remaining
10,000 or more will immediately start looking for work and not find it. In
the Year of the Private Sector, the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor
(vocational training is supposed to fit somewhere too) will further help
the private sector by pushing new quotas down its throat. Businesses that
were already struggling to break even will be forced to hire more omanis
and the burden will break them.

So what is the future for Oman. Well, whatever it is we sure do talk about
it a lot in such optimistic terms when in fact the future is only
depressing. Our future is not in oil, it is not in LNG (and if that ain't a
white elephant then i dunno what is), and it is not in the stock market.
The future is what we make of it, and we can't make anything of it unless
we are allowed to. We need to stop dreaming and we need officials that
aren't afraid of admiting the truth. We are in bad shape, people. The first
step towards recovery is admission. If we can't see our problem we will
never get around to solve it.

muscati

http://members.tripod.com/~muscati