Ministry approves proposal to extend Muscat port concession for one more year

Muscat: Oman’s Ministry of Transport and Communications has approved a proposal to extend the concession agreement of Port Services Corporation to manage and operate Port Sultan Qaboos with the same terms and condition for one more year, until December 31, 2017.
This follows PSC writing a letter to the Minister of Transport and Communications, after a request from the ministry for continuing operation for one more year.
The latest decision to continue operation of the port by the majority state-owned PSC was taken at a meeting of ministry representatives (headed by the undersecretary of ports and maritime affairs), representatives from Oman Tourism Development, Waterfront and Marina Services and from PSC (headed by the chairman).
The corporation will continue to operate and manage Port Sultan Qaboos and will initiate all the necessary steps to obtain approval from the Capital Market Authority to convene an extra ordinary general meeting of the shareholders of the corporation in January 2017 to defer the liquidation of the corporation.
Meanwhile, the Muscat Securities Market has placed the PSC shares in under monitoring market, until the extra ordinary meeting scheduled for January.
The company’s extraordinary general meeting earlier decided to liquidate the firm, with effect from January 1, 2017. In September, the company had said that renewal of the concession agreement to operate and manage Port Sultan Qaboos for another year would not be economically viable and would not generate adequate returns for shareholders. PSC’s revenue began declining substantially after the government shifted commercial activities of Muscat port to Sohar port in August 2014, in a move to convert the former into a full-fledged tourism port.