Tuesday 20 / May / 2025
Muscat: The Authority for Small and Medium Enterprises Development (ASMED) on Tuesday organised a workshop to review the Sultanate of Oman's results in the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) 2024 report.
The workshop was titled "Towards Empowering and Sustainable Growth of Small and Medium Enterprises in the Sultanate of Oman". It was attended by representatives of government units and private sector establishments.
The workshop was opened by Qais Rashid Al Toobi, ASMED Deputy Chairman for Finance and Investment, who explained that the workshop includes 15 working papers covering all areas of relevance to the sector of entrepreneurship and SMEs, the legislative environment and future plans in this field.
“ASMED joins hands with all partners—through initiatives, programmes and other events—to achieve partnerships to empower SMEs and the entrepreneurship sector,” said Al Toobi, noting that the Authority offers programmes in financing, investment, capacity building and marketing.
The workshop reviewed efforts to motivate SMEs and enhance opportunities for partnerships and integration among the government and private sectors, to help empower SMEs, raise the sector's contribution to the gross domestic product (GDP) and augment Oman's rankings in the GEM report.
The workshop included papers that explored entrepreneurial ratios and indices, as well as the outcome of GEM report 2024.
The workshop also included specialised training sessions to empower the owners of SMEs and help them benefit from non-traditional financing platforms.
The workshop dealt with the index of entrepreneurship in vocational education, colleges and universities and highlighted efforts made to establish business centres in all governorates to empower SMEs and startups and to support technology-based and innovation-based startups through the Promising Omani Startup Programme.
It is worth noting that the Sultanate of Oman has achieved exceptional progress in the 2024-2025 GEM report, ranking eighth globally out of 56 countries covered by the report.
This is a three-spot improvement from Oman’s 2023 ranking when it ranked eleventh. This reflects ongoing efforts to enhance the entrepreneurship business environment and support small and medium enterprises.
