Zubair SEC roundtable discusses SME-support ecosystem in Oman

As a natural flow and practical step following its recently published empirical research “The SME Ecosystem in the Sultanate: Seizing Opportunities in Tourism”, Zubair Small Enterprises Centre (Zubair SEC), in collaboration with Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Muscat, organised a stakeholders engagement roundtable at the Bait Al Zubair.

The objective of the roundtable is to engage with various stakeholders from both the public and private sector in a transparent dialogue over the SME Support Ecosystem Diagram presented in the research report and identify areas for further development and ways for realising a more scalable, sustainable and collective impact.

Key stakeholder, in addition to a number of SME owners and entrepreneurs attended the stakeholders engagement roundtable. The session was facilitated by Martin Luxemburg, Director of Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship along with Zubair SEC team.

The empirical research launched last month was commissioned by the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Muscat and was a collaboration between Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship (ECE), Get in The Ring Foundation (GITR), and Zubair SEC. The study endeavoured to establish a deeper understanding of the SME ecosystem in general and the tourism sector in particular while shedding light on opportunities open to SMEs in this vital sector and how to best seize them.

Qais Mohammed al Yousif, Board Member, The Public Authority for SMEs Development (Riyada) said: “We are really happy to see that research has been done to actually map out the SME Support Ecosystem in the Sultanate.

The initiative is really good, and I think there are many players now and what is heartening to see is that in Oman the ecosystem is almost complete. I would say it is in the high 90s — if you see the main pillars or the main categories of SME support as per international standards in Oman we have all the players being very well mapped out. I think today’s roundtables’ main role is that we see that some tweaks might be necessary based on certain other activities which Riyada is currently doing which probably need to be mapped out in the ecosystem. I hope the benefit of all this exercise is eventually enjoyed by the SMEs and Omani entrepreneurs. The idea is always to support them and to enable them to start their businesses in a very smooth way.”

While the roundtable held a transparent constructive dialogue between the stakeholders, it also established high-level understanding of the importance of collective impact, and the importance of public-private collaboration and synchronisation to step up collective impact.

The meeting determined a clear understanding of the SME Support Ecosystem Diagram and the pillars presented in the report. It deliberated on saturation in certain support services and gaps in some services and tools. Participants discussed areas for further development in the support ecosystem and discussed international case studies of advanced/mature support ecosystems.

Finally, the stakeholders identified the most important areas for improvement and how to achieve collaborative action to realise change, and discussed the relevant recommendations presented earlier in the published report in this regard.