By Vinod Nair — MUSCAT: May 8 - The Ministry of Commerce and Industry has said that while a large number of investors have been taking advantage of its Invest Easy service, there is a section that has been misusing the facility.
While Invest Easy Portal helped the customers to do away with the need to physically approach various government departments, a few local as well as foreign investors are trying to abuse the system.
“They have been unlawfully abusing the ‘Invest Easily’ facility by attaching forged bank statements in their applications.”
The ministry said it has referred some cases to the competent authorities for legal action and it is in the process of verifying other applications. Following repeated cases, the ministry said that the original documents need to be presented while submitting the requests through Sanad, legal and auditing firms.
The ministry urged all investors wishing to invest in the country not to exploit the facilities and take care to attach legally-verified and genuine documents during application process.
According to a source at the ministry, this system is for the benefit of investors and they should make use of it in a right way.
The ministry wants investors and businesses to avail e-services under which companies can form a commercial registration online, doing away with any kind of pre-approvals for investors, pay municipal and Oman Chamber of Commerce and Industry (OCCI) fees online and even digital signatures are valid.
All documents will be submitted online, doing away with the need for physically visiting various government offices.
All e-documents will be considered original with digital signatures and verified online within a couple of days. It has also helped Oman to improve rankings in the ‘Ease of Doing Business’ report.
A recent report by the ministry said that less number of people have been visiting the offices in person and over 21,000 transactions were received through the Invest Easy Portal in 2016, including transactions such as cancellation of mortgage of trading establishments, addition and transfer of activities, renewal of commercial agencies’ registration, cancellation of industrial permits, updating and renewal of industrial permits, correction of details of commercial agencies and industrial registration.
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