An initiative by Oman’s Tanfeedh, a national programme for enhancing economic diversification, looks to carry out significant upgrade of Salalah Port’s infrastructure, said a report.

The initiative is aimed at boosting the hub’s container capacity and facilitating the flow of bulk commodities and liquids through the port, added the Oman Daily Observer report.

Tanfeedh’s proposal moots the expansion of Salalah Port’s Container Terminal through investments in new berths designed to ultimately lift the port’s container handling capacity from the present 5 million TEU (twenty-feet equivalent units) to 7.5 million TEU, entailing a 50 per cent increase.

The goal is to “consolidate Salalah’s position as one of the most important transshipment ports in the region”, according to Tanfeedh.

The proposal is part of a raft of initiatives presented by Tanfeedh to help leverage the sultanate’s multimodal transportation infrastructure to fuel the growth of logistics-based economic activities in the country, it said.

The Logistics Strategy 2040 (SOLS) rolled out by the Omani government last year aims to position the sultanate as a logistics hub with the potential to attract additional investment of around RO4.2 billion ($10.9 billion) by 2020, as well as enhance the contribution of logistics activities to the national gross domestic product.