Tejarah Talks digs into Economic Gardening nurturing and cultivating stage II Omani companies

Tejarah Talks digs into Economic Gardening nurturing and cultivating stage II Omani companies

Muscat: Organised by Oman Business Forum in partnership with the Ministry of Commerce, Industry & Investment Promotion (MoCIIP) Tejarah Talks will host a session titled “Economic Gardening: Nurturing & Cultivating Second Stage Companies,” 7:30pm Tuesday, 30 April at Oman Convention & Exhibition Centre (OCEC).

Economic Gardening was first pioneered in Littleton, Colorado in the late 1980s where it focused on providing strategic information to help local second-stage businesses grow and create jobs.

It emphasised technical assistance like market and industry intelligence, search engine optimisation and social media marketing which enabled growth-oriented companies with between 10 to 99 employees make strategic decisions.

The success seen in Littleton, with a 71 percent increase in employment and a tripling of the city’s sales tax revenues without resorting to incentives or tax breaks has led to the adoption of similar Economic Gardening programmes across the US and Europe.

As an example, Florida’s GrowFL initiative has created in excess of 10,000 new jobs, contributing over $900 million to the state’s economy, increasing state and local tax revenues by nearly $82 million. GrowFL’s cost efficiency has also been highlighted, showing that for every dollar of public investment there was a return of $9.

Sowing the seeds for discussions between panellists Pankaj