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Continuing growth
Abdulrazak Ali Issa, Chief
Executive, BankMuscat and Ross Cormack, CEO, Nawras in their
comments to OER predict a huge growth for the country this year
 Abdulrazak
Ali Issa
Chief Executive BankMuscat
The outlook for Oman’s economy in 2012 is positive as the
government has announced a 12 per cent increase in spending,
based on oil price pegged at $75 a barrel and a daily production
of 920,000 barrels. Fiscal surplus is also anticipated in 2012
on the back of supportive oil prices. Indications are that
infrastructure projects will continue to give a fillip to the
economy in 2012 as part of the 8th Five-Year Plan strategy.
The social sectors will also witness sustained focus with
increased allocation for education, health and social security,
leading to a balanced and healthy growth. The diversification of
the economy is proving beneficial in tackling risks emanating
from reliance on the oil and gas sector.
Creating jobs vital
Boosting exports, encouraging investment and devising a strategy
to expand productivity, as also controlling inflation, are
critical to sustaining growth in 2012. Priority will also need
to be given to creating jobs for Omanis, developing agriculture
and other non-oil sectors, especially small and medium
enterprises (SME), by encouraging the private sector to invest
in such projects. Attracting foreign investment is also equally
vital to record growth mainly in infrastructure, industry and
tourism sectors.
In the banking sector, the proposed launching of Islamic banking
operations on the directive of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos will
contribute to the socio-economic development of Oman, heralding
the new era of Islamic financial intelligence in the growing
field of alternative banking and finance. The macro-economic
perspective to the practice of Islamic banking and finance will
lay an explicit emphasis on social responsibility, economic
justice and developmental concerns as also investment
opportunities.
 Ross
Cormack
CEO
Nawras
I think, 2012 is going to be a year of continuing growth
particularly in our industry. We are at an inflection point in
telecommunication where data, which means broadband
communications, is just taking off. And so, we have already seen
a huge growth in 2011 and I can see an accelerated growth in
usage of broadband this year.
We put in huge investments over the last few years in
infrastructure which is specifically for the broadband growth in
2012 and beyond. And I am confident that we will be able to grow
our customer usage considerably this year. I always say that
there are three areas of growth, broadband broadband, broadband,
like the real estate adage of location, location, location.
There is mobile broadband, home broadband and mobile broadband.
To give you a sense of the opportunity, the penetration in the
mobile broadband segment is just 25 per cent presently. By this,
I mean only 25 per cent of our customer base is using mobile
broadband and data. So that is a huge growth opportunity. If you
look at home broadband, if you look at the number of households
which have broadband at home, it is probably only about 70,000
out of the 550,000 customers as per the TRA figures. Over the
next few years it is a huge opportunity.
Again, the corporates have broadband but do they have
diversity?
Cusp of growth
So I could say that the country is just on the cusp of growth of
broadband. And I think, this year is very exciting from that
point of view. There are a number of major projects all around
which employs nationals and expatriates and there is going to be
demand from them. We are working hard to satisfy their new
requirements.
This is not an easy sailing though. The inflection point which I
was talking of is not an easy thing to understand. We still
trying to gauge how people use broadband. The fact is we are
trying to provide as many access points as possible. As you
know, we started with a mobile license, then we won the fixed
licensed as well. Now there are different types of access we can
provide – mobile, fibre to the business, wireless to the home
and now we have got the new wi-fi service. We are always trying
to make it simple for customers to move easily from one access
technology to another.
There are challenges of course. We rolled out a lot of
technology but we need to communicate a lot more of what we are
doing. We just completed 6000 kms of coverage. This will create
a huge growth in reach towards customers.
Upgrading our network capacity is also a challenge in the future
as we will have to keep up with the customers access demands and
also the speeds.
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