The Public Authority for Special Economic Zones and Free Zones (OPAZ) in Sohar Free Zone has launched the service of issuing automatic licences for economic activities through the Invest Easy portal in the zone. The service was launched in a workshop held with the participation of a number of OPAZ employees and representatives from the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion, Sohar Free Zone and others from concerned parties.
The launch is part of OPAZ efforts to harmonise and integrate special, free and industrial zones and central national system & solutions, in order to develop sustainable action plans within the Authority’s continuous plans to develop investment through digital transformation. Investors now can obtain a licence to start their activities and the environmental permit automatically within only 5 minutes, post digitally signing the terms and controls specified for each type of business.
Besides, OPAZ plan aims to unify the procedures for obtaining the services provided by the special economic zones and free zones through its online portals for investors and other beneficiaries through the one-stop shop.
Further, investors can submit their requests to invest in the special economic zones and free zones through the e-services portal for each zone and follow up the applications too. The portal enables investors to attach the required documents and process the e-payment. Hence, the one-stop-shop employees of each zone receive the applications and process the necessary approvals, starting from receiving the applications until completing the final approval for all transactions.
OPAZ is proceeding with plans to develop the investment environment by unifying the one-stop-shop procedures in the economic and free zones as an endeavour to complement its ongoing efforts to attract various investments in its affiliated zones.
This also serves accelerating the process of investors’ transactions and facilitates practicing the businesses and converting paper applications to digital transactions. OPAZ had earlier introduced the automatic licensing service in the Special Economic Zone at Duqm and Salalah Free Zone.
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