This comes as part of Oman's Finance Ministry's plan to reduce the deficit.
The medium-term fiscal balance plan (2020-2024) was prepared by the Ministry of Finance with the aim of bringing the financial situation to sustainable levels. This comes after the crisis of declining global oil prices has cast a shadow on the financial conditions of the Sultanate since it began to decline in late 2014, and it continued at low levels throughout the past period. the government resorted to taking a number of measures to alleviate the impact of this crisis by reducing government unit expenditures, reducing investment expenditures, and increasing non-oil revenue sources.
The government has relied heavily on borrowing, especially from foreign markets, in addition to withdrawing from reserves, which has led to an increase in the total public debt and its service cost to unprecedented levels.
The Ministry therefore released the 30+ page report on how it plans to cope with the deficit, but the following are some of the solutions that stood out:
Easy Invest
An electronic transformation in the procedures for registering and issuing companies’ licenses through the “Easy Invest” platform, which represents a single point of access to all electronic government services for the business sector in Oman. This reduces time for municipal permits from several weeks to hours only, reducing time for obtaining expatriate licenses from weeks to 3 days etc…
Revive Real Estate market
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning adopted a package of measures that work to revive the real estate market:
- Reducing fees on real estate transactions from 5% to 3%.
- Licensing of lease-to-own operations / sale in installments
- Permission to add high floors in buildings in exchange for a fee
- Allowing expats to own residential real estate units in multi-storey commercial residential buildings in specific areas.
Initiative to facilitate entry to Oman
Within the framework of supporting tourism and attracting foreign tourists, citizens of more than 100 countries will be exempted from tourist visa requirements.
Introduction of Taxes
- Income tax on higher earning individuals will be implemented in 2022.
- Value added tax on products and services (more than 90 basic commodities have been included in the list of non-taxed commodities, health care, education and rent sectors were also exempted.)
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