Impacted by the government restrictions and hurdles in exports, Oman’s leading marine resources firm Oman Fisheries Co has reported over five-fold increase in its losses for the year ended December 31, 2019. The company’s net loss widened to RO3.33mn in 2019 compared to RO610,053 net loss recorded in the previous year.

Oman Fisheries announced its unaudited preliminary financial results for the year 2019 to the Muscat Securities Market (MSM) last week.

In terms of overall revenue, the company also suffered a setback as its total sales fell by 25 per cent to RO14.9mn in 2019 as against around RO20mn registered 2018, the preliminary results showed.

Explaining the reasons for such losses in 2019, the company in its filing to the MSM, said, ‘Due to ban on illegal fishermen, the purchase of fishes was drastically affected leading to slump in purchase target by more than RO15mn, which consequently affected sales volume and value.’

Oman Fisheries said that the continued stringent import restrictions imposed by Chinese authorities over usage of Vietnam corridor for import into China had adversly affected trade. ‘This particularly affected the fisheries sector in Oman which export major portion of its fishes through Vietnam corridor to China,’ the company said.

Oman Fisheries said further loss was due to rightsizing and modification of stock parameters in the second quarter of 2019 whereby stock had to be sold at lower than the cost. Oman Fisheries introduced two commercial fishing vessels last year. With these two vessels and along with others which are expected to join the fleet, the company expects to reduce the gap between demand and supply of fish considerably.