Marginal fall in deficit as revenues take a beating

MUSCAT, MARCH 14 - Even as revenues took a beating towards the end of 2019, budget deficit, even though marginal, fell by 0.1 per cent to reach RO 2.65 billion against RO 2.64 billion in the same period in 2018. Although the budget deficit has witnessed a gradual decrease during the past four years as a result of measures taken by the government, revenues, however, witnessed a 4.9 per cent fall by the end of last year. According to figures from the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI), the total revenues of declined to RO 10.410 billion till end of December 2019, over the same period of the previous year due to fall in oil prices.

“The net oil revenues dropped by 5.7 per cent to RO 6.162 billion till the end of December 2019 from RO 6.536 billion for the same period of the previous year,” Oman News Agency said quoting NCSI. Revenues of natural gas fell by 12.7 per cent to RO 1.773 billion, while customs duty and corporate income tax contributed RO 213.1 million and RO 617.9 million respectively during the period.  At the same time, capital revenues stood at RO 69.7 million in 2019, falling 47.8 per cent over the same period of 2018. As far as expenditure is concerned, total public expenditure declined by 3.9 per cent to RO 13.063 billion till December 2019.

“This is against an expenditure of RO 13.599 billion for the same period of 2018”, said the report. Of this, current expenditure fell by 13.6 per cent to RO 8.441 billion while investment expenditure dropped by 19.1 per cent till December 2019.