Crude at $45 may cut deficit

QATAR EMBASSY MARKS NATIONAL DAY
oman/latenews
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OMANDAILYOBSERVER
TUESDAY l DECEMBER 13 l 2016 5
Oman, Saudi Arabia explore
investment opportunities
MUSCAT: Qatar Embassy in Oman hosted a reception at Grand Hyatt on Sunday evening to mark the Qatar National Day. The
reception was attended by ministers, officials, as well as heads of diplomatic missions accredited to the Sultanate. — ONA
Crude at $45 may cut deficit
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Oman’s oil production averaged one
million barrels per day for the first time
in history in 2016.
The new agreement calls for a 4.5-
per cent reduction in Oman’s total oil
output, valued at almost RO 900 million,
and will begin in January 2017.
“The Omani economy which has
been experiencing challenges of low oil
prices, has undertaken policy measures
to expedite economic diversification
and to augment non-oil revenues,” the
analyst said.
However, the deficit has come in
higher than projected, totalling RO 4.4
billion in the first nine months.
The Ninth-Five-Year Plan envisages
average oil production to be 990,000
barrels a day.
Now with the new agreement
reached among non-Opec countries,
Oman will cut oil production by 45,000
barrels a day.
While plan targets growth of not less
than 3 per cent per annum, the same as
in the Eighth-Five-Year Plan, it projects
an average annual deficit of RO 2.96
billion. As a percentage of total revenue,
the deficit is expected gradually to
reduce from 38 per cent in 2016 to 25
per cent in 2020.
RIYADH: As part of the Invest in
Oman campaign, a delegation
from the Public Authority for
Investment Promotion and Export
Development (Ithraa) visited the
Riyadh Chamber of Commerce
and Industry (RCCI) and reviewed
investment opportunities available
in the Sultanate with a view to
arriving at strategic agreements
with Saudi companies.
His Highness Sayyid Faisal bin
Turki al Said, Director-General of
Ithraa, led the Omani side at a
meeting with the Saudi delegation
led by engineer Mansour bin
Abdullah al Shathri, Vice-Chairman
of the Board of Riyadh Chamber of
Commerce and Industry (RCCI).
The meeting discussed ways of
finding a mechanism to facilitate
trade cooperation between Omani
and Saudi investors as well as
promoting the Sultanate as a
promising market and an attractive
investment hub. — ONA
Kenya giving
‘serious thought’
to quitting ICC
NAIROBI: Kenyan President Uhuru
Kenyatta (pictured) said on Monday
his country was seriously thinking of
quitting the International Criminal
Court, after three other African
nations moved to pull out of the
tribunal.
Kenya has been one of the most
vocal critics of the court based in The
Hague, which put Kenyatta and his
Vice-President William Ruto on trial
for orchestrating political violence
that left over 1,200 dead after 2007
elections.
Charges were dropped against both
leaders, with ICC chief prosecutor
Fatou Bensouda blaming a relentless
campaign of victim intimidation, but
bitterness remains in Kenya where the
battle against “imperialism” became
a cornerstone of Kenyatta and Ruto’s
successful 2013 election bid.
“Our experience at the ICC
demonstrated a glaring lack of
impartiality in this institution,”
Kenyatta said in a speech on Monday.
“We have sought the changes
that will align the ICC to respect for
national sovereignty. Those changes
have not been forthcoming. We will
therefore need to give serious thought
to our membership.”
African nations have long felt
they are unfairly targeted by the ICC.
Currently nine out of the 10 ICC
investigations are in African countries.
The other is in Georgia. Numerous
countries have failed in their duty to
arrest Sudanese President Omar al
Bashir, who was indicted by the ICC in
2009 for alleged genocide, war crimes
and crimes against humanity in the
Darfur conflict. — AFP
John Kelly, the Marine General
to head US Homeland Security
WASHINGTON: John Kelly, the
retired Marine Corps general picked
on Monday by Donald Trump to be
Homeland Security Secretary, will take
the lead in the new administration’s
promised fight against extremists and
illegal immigration.
The third former general chosen for
President-elect Trump’s cabinet, Kelly
capped a 45-year military career as
head of the US Southern Command,
an assignment that immersed him in
border security issues, migrant flows
and counter-drug operations in the
Caribbean and Central and South
America.
That experience — and his record
running large organisations — will be
useful if he is confirmed by Congress
to take charge of the Department
of Homeland Security, a sprawling
bureaucracy responsible for border
protection and internal security.
With 240,000 civil servants,
Homeland Security includes the Secret
Service, the Coast Guard, immigration
and customs enforcement, and the
BEATING THE SOARING HEAT
agency that protects airports.
It also has an intelligence arm and an
office dedicated to preventing nuclear
terrorism.
Those functions would make
Kelly a pivotal figure in carrying out
Trump’s election promises to build a
wall on the Mexican border, deport
undocumented immigrants and tighten
legal immigration processes to screen
out potential extremists.
The blunt-talking Kelly is close to
retired general James Mattis, Trump’s
nominee for Secretary of Defence.
Kelly served as Mattis’s top aide in the
2003 assault on Baghdad that crushed
Saddam Hussein’s army.
He is also shaped by the experience
of having his own son, also a Marine,
die in battle. First Lieutenant Robert
Michael Kelly was killed in action in
Afghanistan in 2010.
A native of Boston, Kelly, 66, enlisted
in the Marines when he was 20, spent
two years in an infantry company, and
then left to go to university.
After graduating he rejoined the
Corps as a second lieutenant and rose
steadily through a number of positions,
including company and battalion
commands.
In the late 1990s, he was the Marine
Corps commandant’s liaison to
Congress, the first of two such stints
that exposed him to the political giveand-take
between the military and
legislators.
In 1999, he began a two-year stint
as special assistant to the Supreme
Allied Commander, Europe, in Mons,
Belgium. — AFP
Children leap into a tidal pool as temperatures soar at Camps Bay beach in Cape Town, South Africa, on Monday. — Reuters
Gambia’s President to
challenge election loss
at Supreme Court
President-elect Adama Barrow
BANJUL: Gambia’s President Yahya
Jammeh will challenge the results of a
December 1 election at the Supreme
Court, the ruling party said, raising
the prospect that a shock opposition
victory that was poised to end 22 years
of autocratic rule will be overturned.
Celebrations erupted across the
tiny West African nation last week
when Jammeh unexpectedly conceded
defeat after the elections commission
announced the victory of opposition
candidate Adama Barrow.
However, in a dramatic about-face
that drew international condemnation,
the mercurial former coup leader
on Friday decried “serious and
unacceptable abnormalities” and called
for fresh polls.
In a statement broadcast on
state television late on Saturday, the
Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation
and Construction (APRC) said it was
preparing a petition “against the flawed
decision of the Independent Elections
Commission”.
The deadline for submitting a
challenge to the court is Tuesday.
There is no sitting Supreme Court
in Gambia, though there is currently a
chief justice, who is Nigerian. In order
to hear Jammeh’s complaint, legal
experts believe at least four other judges
must be hired.
Rights groups say Jammeh exerts
strong influence over the court.
Three chief justices served between
President Yahya Jammeh
2013 and 2015. The first, a Nigerian, was
fired five weeks after his appointment
then arrested and jailed. His Ghanaian
successor lasted six months before his
dismissal.
Ali Nawaz Chowhan from Pakistan
served for three months before abruptly
leaving Gambia after acquitting the
former navy chief in a treason case. He
later told a Pakistani newspaper that he
left because the decision displeased the
government.
The last two Gambian judges left the
court a year and a half ago.
“Either you do what Jammeh wants
you to, or you lose your job or even go to
jail,” said Bubacarr Drammeh, a former
state prosecutor who fled into exile in
the United States earlier this year.
“The election results were correct,
nothing will change that,” elections
commission head Alieu Momarr Njai
said on Sunday. “If it goes to court, we
can prove every vote cast. The results
are there for everyone to see.”
Barrow, who has pledged to serve
as a transitional leader and step down
after three years, said on Saturday that
Jammeh had no constitutional authority
to reject the poll results.
The residence in the capital Banjul
where Barrow was staying on Sunday
was surrounded by around 30 unarmed
supporters who said they were
providing security after the police and
military declined to protect him.
— Reuters