MUSCAT: His Excellency Qais bin Muhammad bin Musa Al-Yousef, Minister of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion has issued a ministerial decision amending some provisions of the executive regulations of the Foreign Capital Investment Law.

The first article of the decision stipulated replacing the texts of Articles 7.5 of the Executive Regulations of the aforementioned Foreign Capital Investment Law, with the following two texts as follow:

Article 5: The Ministry may license individuals, institutions and companies from inside or outside the Sultanate of Oman to market investment opportunities, and attract investors and encourage them to invest in the Sultanate of Oman, in accordance with the rules to be determined by a decision of the Minister

Article 7: The foreign investor or his representative may entrust one of the offices licensed by the Ministry to examine the investment license application, and the applications for obtaining approvals, permits or licenses necessary for the establishment of the investment project, to indicate the extent to which they fulfil all the conditions and requirements legally prescribed for their issuance.

A certificate to this effect from the office, which is valid and acceptable before the centre for a period of six months from the date of its issuance, provided that the centre has the right to object to what is stated in this certificate, within 10 days from the date of its submission, and the objection must be justified.

These offices may submit the aforementioned applications to the centre on behalf of the investor, and follow up on their completion.

A decision of the Minister shall specify the conditions and procedures for licensing these applications’ approval offices and their mechanism of work, determining their obligations, in particular obligations related to due diligence in the exercise of their work, verifying the accuracy and validity of data, information and documents submitted to the centre, completing the examination of applications in a timely manner, and maintaining confidentiality data, information and documents related to it.

The second article of the decision stipulated its publication in the Official Gazette, and it shall come into force from the day following the date of its publication.

This decision was based on the Foreign Capital Investment Law issued by Royal Decree No. 50/2019 and the Executive Regulations of the Foreign Capital Investment Law issued by Ministerial Resolution No. 72/2020.