Gateways To Future Growth

Ports and free zones are becoming game-changers for Oman’s longterm economic growth, as the government is focusing on logistics to supplant the hydrocarbon sector as the nation’s economic mainstay.

- Muhammed Nafie

The chronicle of Oman’s history abounds in fascinating accounts of maritime exploits. Remnants of a 4,500-year-old Reed Boat, excavated from Ras Al Jinz, vouch for Oman (erstwhile Majan)’s seaborne trade links with ancient civilisations as far afield as the olden cities of Ur and Sumer in Iraq and the Indus Valley in India. Strategic location of its ports and harbours, excellent boat building capability, marine navigation skills, coupled with a prosperous trade in copper and frankincense helped Oman to position itself as a leading seafaring nation in the days of yore. This legacy was carried on to the later centuries as we see in the fabled story of Sindbad in the eighth century (believed to have originated in Sur), the renowned Ahmed bin Majid who guided Vasco Da Gama around the Cape of Good Hope and beyond in the 15th century, the maritime splendours of the seafaring empires in the 18th and 19th centuries when Muscat occupied a strategic position on the international trade routes and Oman’s ships traveled to as far and wide as London and New York. A new journey of maritime commerce and port development was embarked with the accession of His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said in 1970.

Wind up the time warp to the second decade of the 21st century, when the modern state of the Sultanate of Oman is reinventing and reviving its maritime legacy, by making ports and the attached free zones the centerpieces of its new economic diversification plans.