author - oman observer

Every few weeks I sit across from a manufacturer in Suhar, Rusayl or Al Duqm who treats In-Country Value (ICV) the way one treats a tax audit — as a cost to be minimised, a box to be ticked, a...

A major, yet unheralded, logistics deal in June 2026 has successfully bridged the gap between the Central Asian steppe and the Arabian Sea. By acquiring a controlling stake in Uzbekistan’s Universal...

Every so often two countries look across a map and recognise in each other not a rival but a missing half. When Oman and Kazakhstan signed a framework agreement in Astana this spring to establish a...

On June 1, 2026, the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) between India and Oman enters into force. Signed during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s December visit to Muscat and since...

On April 30, His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik signed Royal Decree 50/2026, establishing a Special Economic Zone for artificial intelligence in the governorate of Muscat. The decree itself is...

On May 12, in a glass-and-steel building overlooking Mina Al Fahal, His Majesty Sultan Haitham bin Tarik unveiled a plaque. The building is Bait Al Haitham — the "House of Haitham" — and it is far...

Every few decades, the global economy reorders itself and the countries that read the moment correctly emerge with positions they could not have secured at any price. The current reordering — driven...

There is a quiet revolution taking place on the tarmac. While the world debates tariffs and trade wars, a different kind of economic architecture is emerging in the shadows of airport terminals; one...

Few relationships in the Indian Ocean economy carry the quiet depth of the one between Oman and Tanzania. Centuries before containers and free-trade agreements, dhows sailed from Sur and Suhar on the...

There are moments in a country’s economic journey when numbers stop being mere statistics and start becoming signals of structural change. Oman’s special economic zones, free zones and industrial...

The World Bank’s April 2026 Economic Update for the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan arrives at a moment of acute uncertainty. A conflict centred around the Gulf has effectively...

India’s Viksit Bharat 2047 and Oman Vision 2040 are not identical projects, but they are unusually compatible. India’s ambition is to become a developed nation by the centenary of its...

Oman’s development story over the past five decades is, by any reasonable measure, a remarkable one. A country that in 1970 had fewer than ten kilometres of paved road has built a modern state with...

There is a quiet revolution underway along the Sultanate of Oman’s land borders. It does not involve speeches or summits alone—it is being built with asphalt, concrete, and cross-border customs...

Consider the world as it stands today. The Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of global oil supply flows, has in recent tensions seen severe disruption. Maritime traffic that once...

Every day, approximately twenty million barrels of crude oil transit through a single waterway thirty-four kilometres wide and sixty metres deep. That volume represents roughly one-fifth of global oil...

Start with the numbers. By the end of the second quarter of 2025, Oman’s foreign direct investment (FDI) stock reached RO 30.279 billion, a 12.8% year‑on‑year rise, according to the National...

If you want to understand the new world economy, stop staring only at stock charts and start watching shipping risk. When risk rises, money moves. In today’s trade environment, insurance premiums,...

Some nations inherit geography; Oman inherited a vocation. Long before “globalisation” became fashionable, Omani seafarers were stitching together the Indian Ocean economy — from East Africa to...

In a world where trade routes can change overnight, investors are no longer chasing the cheapest address. They are chasing the most reliable one. When risk rises — through shipping disruptions,...