Oman invests in youth to develop its tourism
Country trains new entrepreneurs to create more jobs
SALALAH // Oman is looking to tourism to help it battle what is expected to be the GCC’s highest budget shortfall and provide employment for its nationals.
The country, also among the most vulnerable to low oil prices because of its dwindling supplies, is trying to wean its youth away from public service.
To this end, Muscat is looking to expand a government agency that helps young Omanis to build the sustainable small businesses it regards as key to its tourism efforts.
Mohammed Al Ghassani, acting director of Riyada in Dhofar province that includes the popular tourist area of Salalah, is confident the agency can play a more national role.
He says that in three years Riyada has created more than 6,000 jobs, and made small business easier by financing plans.
Mr Al Ghassani’s agency has had to slow down with the economic times, but he is confident it has made a base for sustainable job growth and change to the mindset of young Omanis.
“We know it will take time but we’re happy with what we did in a short time. We think we passed the foundation stage.”
The government is saying to Omani private businesses quite loudly, you have to invest in your own country’s economy more Cinzia Bianco analyst with Gulf States Analytics
SALALAH // Mohammed Al Ghassani sits in his gleaming white office in Salalah’s branch of Riyada, a government agency that helps young Omanis to create sustainable small businesses.
He recounts a success story that he hopes will be recreated across the country as Oman urgently seeks to diversify its economy away from oil and gas.
“A young woman, Jameela Koraa, started a handicrafts business in her house after learning from her mother how to make frankincense, incense and perfume,” says Mr Al Ghassani, the acting director of Riyada for Dhofar governate.
The agency was established in 2013 along with Al Rafd Fund, a government fund, and the two work together to create and finance business plans by mostly young Omanis. Mr Al Ghassani says Riyada was an incubator for Ms Koraa’s branding strategy and also helped her to obtain a reduced price for a storefront in a local mall.
Her business has since grown in tandem with the increase in tourists that Salalah has experienced in recent years, and has become profitable enough for her to open in three more locations.
“She goes to schools and gives lectures about her business now,” Mr Al Ghassani says.
Since its launch Riyada has created more than 6,000 jobs, Mr Al Ghassani says. Most of the small businesses that the agency has helped to set up are located around the capital, Muscat. Diversification But Oman has plans to make tourism one of five sectors that will help to wean the country off oil – and expanding Riyada’s scope to the rest of the country, and Dhofar in particular, is an important part of those plans.
The long-term goal of Riyada is to encourage young Omanis, who mostly prefer to seek traditionally stable but now unsustainable jobs in the public sector, to start their own businesses by reducing some of the financial risks involved in entrepreneurship. Oman remains exceptionally vulnerable to the global drop in oil prices, both because its reserves are expected to run dry within 20 years and because the crude that remains is difficult and expensive to extract. The sultanate is expected to run the highest budget shortfall in the GCC this year, and its GDP dipped from 3.5 to 2 per cent growth this year due to the weakening of non-energy sectors.
In an attempt to overcome these vulnerabilities, Oman has made economic diversification, as well as more varied sources of investment beyond the government, a priority. The tax rate on Omani businesses has been raised, subsidies slashed and a new VAT tax is to be introduced and, like its neighbours, Oman is issuing bonds to address its budget deficit.
“Usually the government is almost the exclusive source of capital into [Oman’s] economy,” says Cinzia Bianco, a London-based GCC analyst with Gulf States Analytics. “Now they are saying to Omani private businesses quite loudly, you have to invest in your own country’s economy.”
Tourism currently accounts for 2.2 per cent of Oman’s GDP, according to the country’s national centre for statistical information NCSI – double what it was a decade ago. Oman hopes that by 2025 the proportion will rise to over 3 per cent of GDP, with tourism employing more than 70,000 people.
In particular officials are looking to Dhofar, a world-class gem of natural beauty that is largely undeveloped for tourists, to play a significant role in that increase. However, the governorate is also the most undeveloped and deprived in Oman and was the site of unrest during 2011. Salalah During the rainy khareef season that runs from late July through September, Salalah and the mountains around it are transformed into a stunning, lush green landscape. The area is an increasingly popular destination for tourists – most of whom drive from other GCC countries.
During this year’s khareef, nearly 580,000 mostly GCC tourists have so far visited Salalah, a 22.6 per cent increase on the same period last year.
Numbers for Omani tourists in general are also on the rise. The ministry of tourism has also been working on promoting the region to wealthy European tourists to keep visitor numbers up during the rest of the year when a much smaller number of visitors – mostly Italian and German ecotourists – arrive. In January the ministry hired the British PR firm Four Communications to boost Oman’s profile in the UK.
While the trend for foreign tourism to Oman has been positive over the past decade, especially in Salalah, NCSI statistics point to a recent slump across the country as a whole that is leading to a slowdown in the pace of new tourism infrastructure projects. In the first six months of this year, Oman experienced a 19 per cent drop in visitors compared with the same time period last year. Infrastructure Salalah has been the recipient of major infrastructure development as part of the government’s plans to boost tourism. It has a new airport, and a number of large hotel resorts are under construction. The old souq and nearby homes have been torn down, and a new flyover recently opened in an attempt to ease traffic congestion during khareef.
But these large projects are being carried out by Omani conglomerates with mostly foreign workers, and usually in partnership with foreign hotels and firms. Unless Omani Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are able to benefit from the expanding tourism trade, plans for the sector to employ substantial numbers of Omanis will remain unfulfilled.
“Since 2014, business is bad for Omani-owned villas (small hotels),” says Musallam Hassan, who operates a beachfront bed and breakfast and desert safari tour company in Salalah.
“There are four new big hotels – more than we need – with empty rooms,” he says, adding that his bed and breakfast establishment is rarely occupied. “The government brought all these hotels [to the country] to create jobs, but Omanis don’t want to work in them.”
Tourists from the Arabian Gulf usually camp in Salalah with their cars or rent apartments and private homes, which has led to a burgeoning rental market and a boom in land prices. But the market is not labour intensive and does not employ many people all year round.
Restaurants and other businesses in the service industry that would also be key to attracting European tourists have not been able to stay open. Gulf visitors prefer to cook themselves or eat meals at the many roadside stalls that spring up during khareef serving local specialities such as barbecued camel and fish.
“You see people opening and closing businesses all the time,” Mr Hassan says.
Optimism
Despite the difficulties, Mr Al Ghassani says Riyada has helped to establish 490 small businesses in Salalah, many directly or indirectly tied to tourism. He does admit that the agency’s mission faces obstacles, including competition from large Omani conglomerates, but says Riyada has helped to secure new guidelines aimed at levelling out the playing field. These include subsidised land for new businesses and loosened Omanisation requirements, as well as guarantees that 10 per cent of tenders in a project go to SMEs.
But in the current economic climate, the government funding that supports Riyada and Al Rafd Fund is more difficult to secure. It is a difficult time to support SME creation “because all our plans depend on finance”, Mr Al Ghassani says. “So we have to slow down.”
He is still very motivated and optimistic that Riyada’s work has created a solid platform for sustainable job growth and for changing the mindset of young Omanis, however.
“We know it will take time but right now we are very happy with what we did in a short period,” he says. “We think we passed the foundation phase.”