By Peter Alagos/Business Reporter
Gulf Organisation for Industrial Consulting (Goic) yesterday concluded a workshop on the latest version of its industrial information portal at its GOIC headquarters in Doha.
Goic assistant secretary general for Industrial Information and Studies Mohamed bin Khamis al-Mukhaini told Gulf Times that the workshop on the Industrial Market Intelligence (IMI) Plus portal targets Goic’s old and new customers.
“We are looking for new customers who can benefit from the information stored inside the IMI Plus. At the same time, the workshop also reintroduces old customers to the portal’s latest version,” said al-Mukhaini.
Al-Mukhaini explained that the IMI Plus combines Goic’s four data bases that focus on commercial, industrial, export and import, and e-Export sectors in the Gulf and provides results for investors both inside and outside the region.
“The portal includes industrial information about 22,000 factories in the GCC (Gulf Co-operation Council) region, including Yemen and is useful to investors, industrialists and analysts who want to carry out informed researches, product market studies, and feasibility studies,” al-Mukhaini explained.
He said the combined investment of the factories featured in the portal amount to $369bn with employment generation of more than 1.3mn workers in 2013.
Users of the IMI Plus, al-Mukhaini said, would be able to choose from the 350 industrial investment opportunities available in the portal and could help investors make sound commercial decisions.
Since the portal uses the latest version, al-Mukhaini said IMI Plus users can get results in just 15 minutes: “Investors can research and collect information from this data base to help them determine which investment ventures they can embark in the GCC.”
He also noted that the Goic website is carried in Google’s search engine and guarantees users flexible search options when meeting specific requirements, input control, detailed high-quality information, and ease in printing and transfer to PDF formats and excel sheets.
IMI Plus users can also benefit from the control panel or dash board, which reviews and compares data on foreign trade, economic and social sectors, and petrochemical industries while the explorer option allows the user to write industrial, commercial, and industrial reports from the existing database.
Portal users can also determine trade balance, market size for a specific product, or identify commercial exchange between countries inside and outside the GCC region, as well as according to country group classification.
Al-Mukhaini said industry stakeholders can also use the portal for research on factories and the size of their investments as well as the strength of their workforce according to the industrial activities in each country.
