IIC emphasises importance of capitalising on silica, limestone, copper and chromium

The Industrial Innovation Center (IIC) held two online workshops on the capitalisation on the sultanate’s natural resources, highlighting four natural minerals, namely silica, limestone, copper and chromium, aiming at enhancing opportunities for sustainable utilisation of these minerals, identifying investment challenges that facing them and how to expand their contribution to the sultanate’s GDP.

The two workshops come within the framework of the IIC’s efforts to develop the industrial sector, and to strengthening the economical revenues of the sultanate’s natural mineral resources. The two workshops highlighted the potential investment opportunities in the mining sector, and the sector’s importance in maximising the added value of the natural resources.

The workshops focused on the IIC efforts in developing the mineral sector’s production, in opening up prospects for small and medium-sized enterprises to utilize the self-employment opportunities, thus contributing to create new jobs opportunities for the jobseekers.

Experts and specialists in mineral economics from a number of local and international entities have participated in the two workshops, in the presence of a number of participants from government and private sectors who concerned with the sultanate’s mining sector, who followed-up the functions via Internet platforms. The two workshops reviewed a set of basic information about the mining sector in the sultanate, its importance, challenges, and the potential opportunities to benefit from these minerals, explaining who the opportunities are clustered, outlining the sector situation in Oman, and presenting different parts of the value chains that can be added by utilising these four minerals, as well as briefing overview of the global scouting of the minerals addressed in the two workshops.

Dr Abdullah al Mahrouqi, CEO of the Industrial Innovation Center, said, “As part of the sultanate’s continuation to implement of Oman Vision 2040 and its objectives of diversifying the sultanate’s economy sources of revenues, the scope of the center’s interests is expanding to include providing whatever could enhance performance and the innovative innovation for various economic sectors, including the mining sector, which we hope will increase its contribution to the country’s GDP.”