Muted investor sentiment since 2016 has resulted in a slowdown of activity on Oman’s stock market. Sovereign downgrades by all three major ratings agencies and constricted government spending in the wake of a rapid oil price decline have taken their toll on trading volumes, nudging the exchange’s index into a negative trend over 2018. However...
Like other GCC states, Oman’s economy is largely driven by oil and gas activity. However, with fewer and more complex hydrocarbons reserves than its neighbours, it is under greater pressure to diversify its economic base. The scale of this challenge was highlighted by recent falling oil prices, which resulted in lower revenues from the...
As the first step in a series of planned privatisations, 2019 should see the partial sale of two government-owned electricity companies: Oman Electricity Transmission Company (OETC) and the Muscat Electricity Distribution Company (MEDC). The motivations for the sell-off strategy are many, ranging from efforts to improve operational efficiency...
In July 2018 the opening of Oman’s largest seawater desalination plant on the coast west of Seeb marked a major step forward for the water utility sector. Completed in less than 30 months at a cost of $300m, the Barka IV independent water project (IWP) has a capacity of 281,000 cu metres per day. The Barka Desalination Company is a consortium...
With the utilities sector continuing its long-term shift towards privatisation, these are changing times for power, water and waste in the sultanate. The year ahead will see further private sector participation in the country’s electricity transmission and distribution networks, while a number of new desalination projects will also get under...
The sultanate’s continuing efforts to boost extraction, develop greenfields and refine its processing capacity are largely intended to support trade links that ultimately see the vast majority of its oil consumed far afield from Oman itself. According to data from the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI), of the 265.5m barrels...
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