Atheer – Oman News Agency
The total volume of foreign direct investment into the Sultanate as per the end of the third quarter of 2017 was 8.33 billion Omani Rials. This represents a growth rate of 13.3 percent from the corresponding period in 2016, according to the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI).
The United Kingdom was first in the volume of foreign direct investment into the Sultanate, with 3.35 billion Omani Rials worth of investment, compared to 3.53 billion Omani Rials in 2016.
The UAE was second in foreign direct investment, with the total value amounting to 949.3 million Omani Rials, up from 785.8 million Omani Rials in 2016. Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar followed with 458.3 million, 455.4 million and 443.9 million Omani Rials worth of investments respectively.
Investment from the United States was shown to have improved significantly as of the end of the third quarter of 2017, whereby its investment amounted to 367.2 million Omani Rials, having stood at 231.1 million Omani Rials during the same period in 2016. Investment from India was 330.5 million, while Swiss investment stood at 312.5 million Omani Rials.
According to the NCSI, foreign investment is concentrated within the field of oil and gas extraction. The statistics revealed that the value of such investment over the aforementioned period was 4.136 billion Omani Rials, having stood at 3.373 billion Omani Rials during the same period of 2016.
Investment in the brokerage sector was 1.408 billion Omani Rials, with the 2016 figure having stood at 1.261 billion Omani Rials. Investment in the industrial sector was recorded as being 1.34 billion Omani Rials, up from 1.2 billion Omani Rials in 2016.
Finally, real estate sector investment was 691.6 million Omani Rials, up from 597.9 million Omani Rials.
