Tourism potential and mineral resources key for Oman’s economic growth: Mahathir

The Sultanate of Oman should tap its tremendous tourism potential and vast mineral resources towards achieving economic diversification, which is the need of the time to attain further development of the nation, said Dr Tun Mahathir Mohamad, former prime minister of Malaysia, while delivering a lecture on “Strategic Planning: the Malaysian Perspective” at the Grand Hall of Sultan Qaboos University’s Cultural Centre on Tuesday.

Dr Mahathir said that strategic planning is equally important for governments and business organisations to achieve their targets and future goals.

“In Malaysia, politicians, the cabinet, civil servants, experts and consultants are involved in the process of economic planning. Malaysia implemented 5 year plans to make it a fully developed nation. The vision was to make Malaysia fully developed by 2020”.

Mahathir said that there are some difficulties in governing a multiracial country like Malaysia. The population of the country is multiracial and multi-religious, a factor that poses some difficulties for governance and sustainable development. Despite the differences, Malaysians live together peacefully by means of benefitting from its national resources, sharing power and fulfilling their responsibilities towards the nation.

Dr Mahathir said that as Prime Minister, his first priority was to correct the imbalances and determine the goals.

“For this, where we can we identified areas develop and sustain the economy. Initially, we focused on agriculture and plantation. This was one way to develop the nation. We have fertile soil and availability of rain in all parts of Malaysia. We brought rubber and palm trees from Brazil and West Africa.

Through science and research, we improved the yield of the rubber and palm tree plantations cultivated in Malaysia. We could achieve more than 10 times yield than their native varieties. Efficient use of land for agriculture and plantation was a priority”.

“When market conditions changed for rubber and palm oil exports, our focus turned towards manufacturing and industry. In fact, Malaysia did not have prior experience in rapid industrialisation. That is why we decided to invite foreign investment to the country by making it a business friendly nation.