[oman-l] have any of you actually done business in oman?

[Michael F. DAVIE]

>It is very easy to write from a detached point of view about advantages and
>disadvantages. Hindsight is 20/20 as they say. It is all well and good to
>study the past and learn from its mistakes, after all those who don't learn
>from their mistakes are doomed to repeat them.
>
>The economic situation is really grave. We have been in a recession for the
>past 12 years and no one wants to admit it. We are force fed economic
>statistics that make absolutely no sense and are expected somehow to
>believe them. For example  there  apparently is no inflation in oman. Maybe
>that explains why wages are so low, huh?
>
>Ask any merchant how low his/her profit margins are. Ask how hard it is to
>collect receivables. Ask if they can survive without the bank overdrafts
>that further eat into the profit margin. Volumes are low because the
>population is small, visitors are few. Commerce laws are complicated and
>provide unnecessary burdens on traders. Large amounts of money are siphoned
>outside of the economy and transfered abroad by foreign workers and foreign
>merchants that operate in oman behind the scenes while their omani partners
>ruin the economy for 50 rials a month. Tax laws are unfair to small
>businesses and extremely lax on corporations. We promote foreign investment
>and yet the foreign investment law still unfairly taxes foreign
>corporations. We talk about tourism and the need for more hotels, but try
>getting a visa to visit oman. Who are these tourists that we are talking
>about? We complain about the effect Dubai has on our market, well why
>didn't we take the initiative first and become the business hub that Dubai
>has become. We are certainly better positioned geographically.
>

>So what is the future for Oman. Well, whatever it is we sure do talk about
>it a lot in such optimistic terms when in fact the future is only
>depressing. Our future is not in oil, it is not in LNG (and if that ain't a
>white elephant then i dunno what is), and it is not in the stock market.
>The future is what we make of it, and we can't make anything of it unless
>we are allowed to. We need to stop dreaming and we need officials that
>aren't afraid of admiting the truth. We are in bad shape, people. The first
>step towards recovery is admission. If we can't see our problem we will
>never get around to solve it.
>
>muscati
>
>http://members.tripod.com/~muscati


Perhaps we are geting to the core of a very interesting debate. Dubai, it
seems, has exacly the same role : export capital, or at least facilitate
the movement of capital, with marginally little investment in the country
itself. Would Oman be just part of a larger system whereas capital is never
kept in the country (that inscludes all Gulf States : see the bill they
paid for the Gulf War), but returns to the industrialized countries. The
globalization of the conomy (a more polite word than "colonialism" ? ;-)
)  is boiliong down to a more organized and sophisticated use of  world
resources by the industrialized North, led by the US. Would Oman just be
part of that puzzle, leaving the country to face the consequences when
those resources dry up ?

Salamat
Michael Davie




@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Michael F. DAVIE          davie@droit.univ-tours.fr
UMR 6592 "URBAMA" (Urbanisation dans le Monde Arabe)
23 rue de la Loire,  B.P. 7521,  37075 Tours Cedex 2 (France)
Tel. : (+33) 02 47 36 84 69,  Fax. : (+33) 0 2 47 36 84 71
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@