Home > Research > Activities > Oman Entrepreneaurship and Venture Capital Conf...
View graph of relations

Oman Entrepreneaurship and Venture Capital Conference

Activity: Talk or presentation typesPublic Lecture/ Debate/Seminar

6/12/20157/12/2015

Muscat, (IINA) - The 1st Oman Conference on Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital kicked off at the Crowne Plaza Muscat Hotel on Sunday under the auspices of, Minister of Commerce and Industry and Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Public Authority for Small and Medium Enterprises Development "Riyada" Dr. Ali bin al-Sunaidi, Oman News Agency (ONA) reported.
The two-day conference aims to sensitize companies, businessmen and investors of the importance and feasibility of venture capital investments, their social responsibility and assistance to relevant government agencies in providing stimulating regulatory environment to support venture capital investments.
The conference also aims to strengthen the role of academic and research bodies in supplying this type of investment and highlight the global initiatives and experiences in supporting capital investments. The conference, organized by Riyada, the ministry of commerce and industry and Iskan Oman Investment Company, aims as well to identify the venture capital techniques in comparison to developed countries and provide recommendations and proposals necessary for its development in support of the Omani economy.
In his speech, Dr. Ali bin al-Sunaidi said: "Today, we face a new way of funding between the public and private sectors in order to encourage entrepreneurs in a manner that enables the financing of their projects, helps them to control the risks, rationalization of costs and then sharing the adventure proportion with finding an easy and systematic mechanism after several years of success of their projects".
He added that the major challenges facing the new projects with innovative ideas is the lack of sponsorship in the early stages of implementation and inadequate funding by the venture capital, which is a manner to fund companies that do not only provide cash, such as banking finance, but are based on the participation in the risk and profits.
Dr. al-Sunaidi pointed out that the establishment of the Omani Venture Capital Company and other projects will be announced later on Monday, the second day of the conference. The conference's themes revolve around mechanisms to promote high-growth entrepreneurship through the application of financing policies via venture capital, which will open up promising prospects for SMEs, and will be considered an important alternative to the traditional way of financing techniques.
The conference included two sessions. The first session was entitled "Features of Investment in the Sultanate" and included political, geographical and natural factors that are the first requirement for any foreign investor. The session also touched on the legal factors, such as security, social stability, economic freedom and local development being witnessed by the Sultanate.
The second session addressed opportunities and areas of investment and different challenges. The session addressed the global trends and their implications for investment in the Sultanate, the intra-trade and ways of development, opportunities of investment in ports, free zones, real estate sector, the tourism sector, the industrial sector, and the sector of education and health.

External organisation

NameCrowne Plaza Muscat Hotel
Country/TerritoryOman