Oman vows to push on with $350mn market fund

OMAN FUND: The goverment in Muscat is pressing ahead with plans for a fund to help shore up the stock market. (Getty Images)

Oman is pushing ahead with plans to shore up its bourse through a 150 million rial ($389.6 million) market marker fund in partnership with the private sector, the fund's chairman said on Thursday.

"The government has established the fund to restore confidence in the market," Rashid Salim al-Masroori, chairman of the Investment Stability Fund, said in a statement on the Oman bourse website.

"A meeting will be held shortly with investment companies and pension funds ... to discuss the best ways for effective achievement of the objective of the fund, most importantly market stability."

Oman said in November it would create the fund with the private sector to stabilise a market roiled by the global financial crisis.

The bourse shed more than 44 percent last year but two government officials told Reuters on Wednesday that the Gulf Arab country was reviewing the fund plan amid worries about the impact of declining oil prices on its budget.

Oil prices, which stood at $53 a barrel when the fund was announced, have since sunk below $40 and Oman has said it would consider cutting spending if oil falls below the $45 a barrel price it had budgeted for 2009.

The Muscat bourse had said it expected the fund to hit the market in the first week of December.

Masroori said that Oman's Capital Market Authority had approved the plan, that a bank account had been set up and that the fund was now seeking a portfolio manager.

The government will dedicate 60 percent of the funds with the remaining 40 percent coming from banks, investment companies and pension funds.

The statement did not say when the fund would come into operation. (Reuters)

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