MUSCAT: Oman plans to invest up to $15 billion in new petrochemical and infrastructure projects in the southeast of the Gulf country over the next 10 years and create thousands of new jobs, its finance minister said Tuesday. "We are planning to spend between $10 to $15 billion in Duqm in new projects, including the refinery and a petrochemical plant," Finance Minister Darwish Al-Balushi told an investment and economic forum in the sultanate's capital. "These projects would open up ... between 15 to 20,000 jobs for the nationals in the next 10 years," he said. The port town of Duqm has been earmarked as the next industrial city after Sohar, with the sultanate's government planning to spend heavily on airport, dockyard, refinery and petrochemical plants among other projects. "We are not talking about one project or two but this investment will cover the infrastructure of the whole town in the next ten years," a finance ministry source said. Sultan Qaboos bin Said promised a $2.6 billion spending package in April. He also announced plans to create 50,000 new jobs, established a new monthly unemployment benefit and reshuffled his cabinet. In December, Oman projected a record expenditure of 8.130 billion rials ($21.12 billion) in its 2011 budget, up 13.2 percent from the previous year. The 2011 budget was set with a deficit of 850 million rials, or 3.8 percent of gross domestic product, based on an oil price of $58 per barrel, after the government posted a deficit of 48.4 million rials last year. However, analysts polled by Reuters in March expected Oman to show a budget surplus of 5.3 percent of GDP, helped by robust oil prices. The country sold its crude at an average price of $88.4 per barrel in the first three months of 2011.
