Oman's mining target needs a denominator

Oman's mining ambitions are becoming easier to see. Measuring their economic impact is harder.
New concessions are being developed, copper production has returned and investment is flowing into extraction and associated infrastructure. Yet behind this expansion sits a surprisingly basic question: what exactly counts as mining when Oman measures the sector's contribution to the economy?
The answer matters because the target is substantial. Invest Oman publishes a target to raise mining's contribution to gross domestic product from 1.4 per cent in 2020 to 10 per cent by 2040. A target of that scale is not merely an expression of ambition; it is a benchmark against which diversification should eventually be judged.
For that to happen, the denominator must be clear.
The national accounts provide one starting point. At constant 2018 prices, the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI) recorded value added from mining and quarrying at RO 228.1 million in 2022, RO 225.2 million in 2023 and RO 218.8 million in 2024. It rose 1.5 per cent to RO 222.1 million in 2025.
The important point is not the small increase in the latest year but the longer trajectory: on this measure, mining and quarrying generated less real value added in 2025 than in 2022. That does not demonstrate failure. Large mining developments take time to move from concessions and capital spending into production and value added.
What the figures do show is why the definition behind the target matters. Measured against this series, 10 per cent of GDP is roughly twenty times the sector's present share of national output — if, that is, the target refers to the same mining-and-quarrying category used in the national accounts. If it refers instead to a wider minerals economy incorporating processing, manufacturing and other downstream activity, the comparison is not like-for-like.
There is another clue in the official numbers. The Ministry of Energy and Minerals reported that 62.5 million tonnes of minerals were sold in 2024, generating more than RO 114.3 million. NCSI recorded RO 218.8 million of value added under mining and quarrying in the same year.
These are not two estimates of the same quantity. Sales revenue and value added are different concepts and the statistical coverage may differ too. That is precisely why the figures are useful here: they show how easily different measures labelled “mining” can enter public discussion without describing the same thing.
The ministry's own reporting reveals another limitation. Its 2024 annual report said mineral sales volumes fell 12 per cent from the previous year, with building materials accounting for much of the decline and attributed the fall to delays by mining companies in submitting monthly production reports. A movement in an administrative series may therefore reflect reporting completeness as well as underlying economic activity.
None of this means the statistics are wrong. It means they answer different questions and the mistake would be to treat them as interchangeable measures of diversification.
Physical output and economic value can move very differently. A tonne of limestone shipped with limited processing does not have the same effect on the domestic economy as the same resource moving through a local industrial chain. Processing creates demand for engineering, maintenance, transport and specialised skills; and can raise the value of the product before export.
Employment cuts the other way. A modern, highly automated mine can generate substantial output and value with relatively few workers. Tonnes alone are therefore insufficient. So are jobs. So are investment announcements. The more useful question is what remains in Oman between extraction and export.
There is a legitimate objection to this argument. Minerals do not remain minerals statistically once they move along the value chain. Limestone becomes cement and is recorded in manufacturing. Further processing can generate value that appears outside mining and quarrying. Transport and port activity may be recorded under logistics.
If that wider chain is what Oman intends to build, a narrow extraction measure will understate mining's broader economic footprint. But that is an argument for greater clarity, not for abandoning measurement.
Whichever perimeter the 10 per cent target represents, it should be published and remain stable enough for progress to be measured over time. Otherwise the benchmark risks moving with the narrative: tonnes when production rises, investment when projects are announced, downstream manufacturing when value creation is discussed and employment when localisation is the focus.
Every one of those indicators has value. None can substitute for a consistent measure of the sector's economic contribution.
This matters more as projects grow in scale. At Al Shuwaimiyah in Dhofar Governorate, Minerals Development Oman puts planned annual capacity at 30 million tonnes of gypsum and limestone, supported by a port designed to handle 27 million tonnes a year and describes the development as an integrated industrial minerals project intended to strengthen local value chains as well as export capacity.
That objective should be judged by outcomes as the project develops, not by the description attached to it today. The question is not simply whether 30 million tonnes can be produced, but how the project changes the economic value generated from those minerals before they leave Oman.
Oman would benefit from a concise annual minerals scorecard built around one published definition. It need not be complicated: value added on a consistent basis, investment, direct employment and Omanisation, mineral production, the proportion receiving further processing inside Oman and, where measurement permits, the domestic value retained before export.
Most importantly, it should reconcile those indicators with the scope used for the 2040 target.
This is not an argument for lowering the ambition of Oman's mining strategy. It is an argument for making that ambition measurable.
By 2040, Oman should not have to prove the success of mining principally by showing how much rock it moved. It should be able to show, consistently and transparently, how much of that rock's value stayed in Oman.