The Ludacricy of Competency

We all know what opening the market up would do to local merchandise, service and product distributors. It heats up the competetion and allows a fair chance of allowing those to force effect the 'jungle law' whereby the strongest stays alive whereas the weakest get either eaten up or thrown off the path of the economic freeway.

But it seems in Oman, that this is not the case. It's just another excuse to not move one inch or not prepare against such global ventures.

Example being (even though it is a very small example) when way back ago they used to stop the outside newspapers from being delivered into the market for fear that none of the Omani newspapers would ever get bought. Up to the point that they were delayed for sale one whole day. But this decision by the Ministry of Industry and Commerce, back then, was only applied to certain publications. Now the restrictions have been lifted because Omani newspapers got the headstart they needed to withstand the competition.

Another example is the online business - per say - of online telephony companies against local telecom companies. Here in the Gulf region, Etisalat and OmanTel had both banned in and out on serveral intervals the selling of internet telephone cards for companies such as Net2Phone or go beyond to restrict access to newbie phone company Skype for fear that no one would use their rather cheap telephone services. While they could have taken full advantage of the situation by introducing their telephone cards for sale through their (Etisalat and/or OmanTel) respective outlets or even offering their services through their sales branches.

The whole idea to competition isn't just to allow the consumer to roam freely upon the options and choices of more than one choice through the contenders, but it is also to free up the market from a monopoly situation, make prices cheaper, allow more value added services to come in, and spruce up the market with the heat wave of going through what each rival is offering prices, services, or otherwise.

It is still a lesson to be learnt here in Oman.