The Capital Market Authority (CMA) in cooperation with Muscat Security Market has commissioned a project for implementing the XBRL disclosure platform for the reporting of financial and non-financial information by all issuers listed on MSM and other companies which are operating under any license from the CMA.
XBRL, or eXtensible Business Reporting Language, is an XML standard for tagging business and financial reports to increase the transparency and accessibility of business information by using a uniform format. XBRL enables the data to be captured, stored, and disseminated in a machine-readable form. The biggest value to the investor community would be brought about by a rich, analytic portal that will be built on the XBRL data which will enable the analysts and investors to take deep dives into the digitalized data and also stay updated on latest developments. Users would be able to perform various analysis on the data including comparisons and ratio analyses across companies, sector or any other category, and generate reports to help them in their investment decisions decision making.
This would be another first in the history of Capital Market Authority after the recent successful launch of a locally developed platform in record time for holding virtual General Meetings and E-voting that enabled companies to hold virtual AGM without a physical gathering of shareholders. CMA had also introduced automated book building process that ensured price discovery mechanism through online and transparent bidding for the benefit of investors by which a fair IPO price is determined by the investors themselves.
“We are continuously working to achieve the objective of bringing in more transparency and efficiency by adopting automation and futuristic tools that would benefit and protect the investors, regulated entities and the overall economy in line with Vision 2040 of the Sultanate of Oman,” stated Shaikh Abdullah Salim al Salmi (pictured), Executive President of the CMA.
“The XBRL implementation in Oman will be based on the latest International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) taxonomy and would be seamlessly integrated with the disclosure filing system of MSM. The filing would be available both in Arabic and English. CMA intends is to provide an easy but powerful functionality to the investors and the other concerned, to carry out their own or bespoke financial analysis on the portal itself and generate attractive reports with graphics and tables etc. Such analytic facilities are critical for further raising the level of effective governance and would be a first in the GCC. Fintech companies, app developers and creative analysts would also be invited to create their own analytic products by integrating with the APIs offered by the XBRL portal. Even issuer companies would be able to create investor relation widgets on their own websites by linking to the XBRL portal to and offer various feeds, information and analytics,” added Mohammed Said al Abri, Vice President - Capital Market Sector.
CMA would issue further communications in the matter in due course and will provide all necessary guidance and support to the reporting entities before the XBRL filing is made mandatory, added Al Abri.
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