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26-09-2019

Oman Observer

MUSCAT, The National Strategy for Research and Development (NSRD 2020-2040) will be based on a wide range of areas focusing on diversification of national income and human resources development among others. Dr Jamila al Hinai, Project Director of NSRD 2020-2040, said that a participatory approach will be adopted for the formulation of the national strategy. “We are primarily focusing on national priorities in which research and development can contribute and this will be done within the Oman Vision 2020,” Dr Jamila told the Observer.

According to her, there are three prime areas of our attention — diversification of income sources, human resources and the society, and the governance and the institutional performance of public sector. “The project formulation is not done through any consultation but by the local human resources at The Research Council in partnership with the stakeholders like the private and public sectors, the academic institutions, the industrial sector and the wider community,” she said.

With this in mind, the TRC conducted a second workshop of the NSRD 2020-2040, one of TRC’s major projects in 2019.

Discussions are deep-rooted in diversification of national income sources and other areas.

In preparation for this workshop, TRC held three workshops that discussed the three theme clusters of the NSRD 2020-2040 titled socio-economic empowerment, food-energy-water nexus and intellectual capital.

The previous strategy was a roadmap through which The Research Council implemented many programmes supporting the infrastructure for research and innovation in the Sultanate, Dr Hilal bin Ali al Hinai, Secretary-General of TRC, said.

“We are currently building on what has been achieved so far in accordance with Oman Vision 2040, which stressed that innovation is one of the basics to support the economic and social development in the Sultanate,” he said.

Dr Sharifa al Harthy presented the situational analysis of research and development at the workshop attended by more than 500 participants who reviewed the revised draft of the national priorities for research and development for 2020-2040, while Balaqis al Hinai presented the operational plan of the strategy.

“By October 3, data, information and all the procedural tools will be collected. Then, the three specialised teams will analyse that data and raise recommendations to draw the key features of the strategy,” Dr Jamila added.

The ‘decision-makers’ dialogues will be held from mid-October until mid-November which are expected to share and review the outputs of the three preparatory workshops that will help the decision-makers direct on the implementation plan.

“We began to define the research priorities for the strategy in July 2018. We then contacted the concerned institutions and asked them to determine their research priorities, which has been discussed during the last Annual Research Forum held in December in 2018,” Dr Obaid al Saeedi, Head of the National Research Priorities team for NSRD 2020-2040, said.

The final draft of this strategy will be presented in the National Symposium for the preparation of the NSRD 2020-2040 that will be held on December 15.