Seen as integral in
promoting investments and improving the future of the economy, the Invest Easy
service is the culmination of a decade-long plan to create an innovative, open,
and reliable business environment.
The early 2000s saw
a rethink, by the MOCI, of the commercial registration process. The passing of
Executive Regulation 121/86 on the Commercial Register Law sparked the first
wave of integration in a One-Stop Shop system (the “OSS”). The OSS allows those
requiring access to various governmental departments to come to one place for
the majority of their dealings. Moreover, 2003 saw an initiative to incorporate
technology into this process and a system streamlining certain business aspects
was rolled out in 2006. Despite being limited in accessibility and in
substance, it resulted in an increase in the number of commercial
registrations. Following further regulation and planning, the beginning of 2014
marked the introduction of the Invest Easy portal, allowing a number of
essential business tasks to be completed online 24/7.
In order to improve
and simplify the user experience, the MOCI keeps a constant dialogue with
entrepreneurs, law firms, and companies and, term by term, the user has seen an
expansion in the capabilities of the system as well as the streamlining of the
administrative processes. Recent improvements are a result of this dialogue and
have included the possibility for law firms and other registered users to pay
for transactions online without a point of sale system, and to access
commercial registration information and certificates for free.
Fundamentally, the
online portal allows investors to quickly and securely register a new business
in the Commercial Register. Upon establishment, businesses can complete a
number of tasks including but not limited to: updating company information
(name, share capital, shareholders, etc.), accessing information about other
commercial entities, submitting license applications and including in their
registrations over 210 different unlicensed commercial activities. Moreover,
the portal also provides clear and simplified information on numerous
procedures, and enables users to update all their new data online. New
additions relating to the registration and management of commercial agencies
are expected by the end of July 2016.
Following the
general intention to simplify the management of businesses in Oman, the MOCI
has taken the decision to consolidate the Certificate of Incorporation and the
Commercial Registration Information of all registered companies in a new
document, the Commercial Registration Certificate, and has abolished, effective
1 June 2016, the authorised signatories form, i.e., the form setting out the
specimen signatures of the persons authorised to act on behalf of the company.
The details of the authorised signatories are now set out in the Commercial
Registration Certificate, which now is a Digitally Signed Form, signed and
certified using a Digital Signature Certificate as per the Electronic
Transactions Law (Royal Decree 69/2008).
Currently, the
portal is working in cooperation with Ministry of Manpower, Royal Oman Police,
Ministry of Environment and Climate Affairs, Muscat Municipality, Oman Chamber
of Commerce and Industry and many other government entities.
Nortal, the software
architects of the portal, have noted that in the first six months of the new
commercial registration service implemented in Oman, of the over twelve
thousand new companies which were registered, 1,000 were registered using the
portal, with that proportion increasing month by month. In September of 2015,
16.7% of the total company registrations came through Invest Easy.
If diversification
is to come into the economy, systems such as Invest Easy are instrumental in
attracting new investment into Oman. Despite its long teething problems, the
system is a drastic improvement from having to attend various ministerial
departments costing time and money to investors and firms.
