A joint venture of local Suhail Bahwan and Oman Brunei Investment Company expects to award the main contract for the construction of a 100-bed private hospital in Muscat in the third quarter of 2017.

It is understood that local and international contractors have been prequalified to bid for the contract for which tenders were released last week.

The hospital will specialise in mother and child care and will be operated by Portuguese operator Ideal Med, according to Qais Abdullah al-Kharusi, CEO of Oman Brunei Investment Company.

It is understood that Oman will require an additional hospital 1,500 beds by 2020 to cater to its growing population.

The hospital is among the projects that have been initiated by Oman Brunei Investment Company, a private equity firm formed between the sovereign wealth funds of Oman and Brunei.

Other projects initiated by the company include the $250m Kempinski Hotel in Muscat, which is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2018. It has also injected funds to Sun Packaging, which specialises in flexible package manufacturing and in Renna Mobile, a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), which has recently exited the fund.