Investment in information and communication technology in developing countries: The effect of foreign direct investment: Evidences from sultanate of Oman

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is a crucial tool developing the economy of any country if it is employed in a proper manner. Moreover,FDI has many effects; and one of them is thriving the information and communication technology (ICT) sector as a pivotal sector which includes four subsectors according to the World Bank (ICT service exports,ICT goods imports,high-technology exports and ICT goods exports). Hence,the aim of this paper is to identify the influence of FDI in thriving the sub-sectors of ICT,as one of the drivers to develop the economy. To accomplish this purpose the statistical data on direct foreign investment and exports and imports of ICT about Sultanate of Oman were collected from 2000-2014 published by the World Bank. Descriptive statistics and simple regression model were used to analyze the collected data and test the hypotheses of the study. The findings show that the planning for FDI is ad-hoc,therefore there should be a obvious view of how to exploit FDI in economy development,especially in transferring of ICT. The paper contributed to the literature by being the first study that attempted to interpret the role of FDI on exports and imports of ICT in Sultanate of Oman.