MUSCAT: Deliberations of Conference on Primary Materials Management, began on Wednesday under the patronage of Ahmed bin Hassan al Dheeb, Under-Secretary of the Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Board Chairman of the Public Authority for Mining.
The two-day conference is organised by Gulf Organization for Industrial Consulting (GOIC) in cooperation with Hawkamah, the Institute for Corporate Governance in Qatar and the Omani Center for Business Services ‘Tasaheil.’
Al Dheeb said that the conference is a platform for communication between the Omani businessmen and their Qatari counterparts to create partnerships and investments in the production and export of primary materials.
He affirmed that the Sultanate is producing important primary materials in the construction sector such as Al Jabro, sand, limestone and other materials, expressing his hope that this conference will contribute to increasing the production and export of primary materials and increasing investments between the two brotherly countries.
Hilal bin Mohammed al Busaidy, CEO of the Public Authority for Mining explained that the Sultanate is rich in many of these primary materials, including Al Jabro, pointing out that the conference reviews the needs of Qatar sister of these materials and how to provide and export them to Qatar.
Meanwhile, Saad bin Ahmed al Mahanadi, President of the Qatari Public Works Authority, Chairman of Qatari Primary Materials Company said that the conference aims to review the opportunities of production and export of primary materials and viewing the international experiences in this regard, as well as studying the possibility of applying and benefiting from these experiences.
He pointed out that the volume of Qatar’s Al Jabro imports from the Sultanate increased from 37,500 tonnes in June 2017 to 633,000 tonnes in current March, in addition to the increase in the number of Omani quarries that are being dealt with in order to export these materials to Qatar from two to 16 quarries.
Dr Ali bin Hamed al Mulla, Assistant Secretary General for Industrial Projects Sector at the Gulf Organization for Industrial Consultancy (GOIC), explained that the GCC’s building materials industry in 2016 ranked fourth in terms of volume of investment to reach $40.3 billion, accounting for about 10.2 per cent of the total invested money in manufacturing industries, which amounted to about $394.9 billion.
The number of factories in this sector reached 2,978 factories representing 16.9 per cent of the total number of manufacturing plants which amounted to about 17,596 factories in the same year.
The first session dealt with the primary materials in the State of Qatar, while the second session reviewed the challenges of production and investment in primary materials in the Sultanate.
The third discussion session dealt with the challenges of exporting primary materials from the Sultanate.
The conference includes a discussion session on Qatar’s specifications for construction, as it is hoped that it will come out with recommendations that will increase the production and export of primary materials and increase investments between the two countries.
— ONA
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