I would personally love to get involved and not merely as the CEO of Maharat to help shape the way in which SMEs work in this country.

Under the current conditions where the oil prices are low and expected to remain so for some time, companies are focussing on In Country Value. What are your thoughts on the promotion of the ICV strategy in Oman?

We are in a recession kind of environment. Raoul Restucci, Managing Director of PDO came up with a cracking term the other day when he said, “Why waste a crisis?” He is absolutely right. We are very fortunate in Maharat that we are very new and we do not have any legacy or huge overheads. We are focussed on keeping the costs low. It is true that training budgets have been slashed by around 40 per cent and we have to admit it is a problem, but training is still required. There is still the mandatory training like HSE and first aid and we focus on such areas too.

The second thing is that Omanis are used to going abroad for training but now all the government and private companies are finding it financially prohibitive to send these individuals to various parts of the world for training. They need the training to happen in Oman. Maharat is totally geared for that with the International Centre of Excellence and we have the expertise to provide international level training right here in Oman.

An organisation like PDO spends millions on training and that is one area, which will unlikely be cut. We can now offer international and dedicated training for logistics and transport supply chain. Maharat is also focussed on Quality Assurance training in addition to important segments like Employability Skills, Technical English, Soft Skills, Logistics, Transportation and HSE for ICV.

How much of your course content is created in-house?

More than half of it. It does take a while to construct these courses and it is highly competitive too. We have found that clients are prepared to pay a bit more for a properly customised designed course and we are happy to do that.

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