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Oman’s $260m fund to boost stock market liquidity

By Pramod Kumar
Oman News Agency
The liquidity fund initiative seeks to expand MSX and enhance its attractiveness to investors

Oman Investment Authority (OIA), the state-owned sovereign wealth fund, has allocated OMR100 million ($260.14 million) to boost liquidity in the Muscat Stock Exchange (MSX).

A new liquidity fund initiative has been launched in cooperation with the National Programme for Financial Sustainability and Financial Sector Development, state-run Oman News Agency reported.

Aoun Abbas Al Bahrani, the OIA’s director general of public market investments, stated that the liquidity fund initiative strives to support the market maker and liquidity provider in the stock exchange.

He added that the liquidity fund portfolio will make up a percentage of the daily trading volume on the stock exchange based on the activity of investors and their interaction with economic news and the disclosure of listed companies.

The initiative seeks to expand MSX and enhance its attractiveness to investors, which will help increase trading volumes and draw new companies. 

In March 2022 the CEO of Muscat’s bourse, Haitham bin Salem al Salmi, said Oman aimed to list 35 state-owned enterprises in the following five years.

Market turnover in the first three months of 2023 stood at $497.1 million (OR191.40 million), down 43.9 percent year on year.

Oman’s market regulator had announced plans to introduce new rules requiring companies seeking to go public to have a liquidity provider in place before joining the bourse.

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