The government of Oman, led by Sultan Haitham bin Tarik, saw major milestones in a number of financial, economic and monetary indices for the year 2021, official sources have said.
The country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in current prices, as at the end of the third quarter in 2021, reportedly rose to RO24.2 billion ($62.84 billion).
Forecasts apparently point to an expected amelioration of the GDP at current prices to RO32 billion ($83.22 billion) this year (2021), with a growth rate of 13.8 percent compared to 2020.
As a result, Oman registered a decline in deficit from an estimated RO4.8 billion ($12.48 billion), as was the case before undertaking fiscal management procedures, to RO1.2 billion ($3.12 billion) by the end of this year, constituting a 75 percent cut in deficit, said the official sources.
As a percentage of the GDP, the deficit was down from 15.5 percent in 2020 to 3.8 percent this year.
Public spending was said to have been brought under control despite financial challenges, which required allocating extra credit to manage the situation.
This included addressing the spread of coronavirus and raising the reception and admission capacity of higher education establishments to 31,000 seats, in addition to the allocation of RO418 million ($1.09 billion) for the payment of overdue balance of previous years.
Another RO1.2 billion ($3.12 billion) was spent on the settlement of the financial dues of private sector companies till the end of 2021 and employment costs.
An allocation of RO200 million ($520 million) was also made to meet the cost of repairing damages resulting from the tropical cyclone Shaheen.
Part of the additional credit was said to have been routed to cover the government’s contribution towards capital and operational expenses of the oil and gas sectors due to a delay in procedures to establish Energy Development Oman (EDO) company.
Oman reportedly registered a 68 percent decline in the general debt-to-GDP ratio, as compared to a planned 83 percent.
All credit rating agencies amended Oman’s future outlook during this year to “stable” and “positive” after successive downgrading that started in 2014, said the official sources.
Commodity exports posted an increase of 42.2 percent till September 2021, compared to the corresponding period last year (2020).
Commodity imports rose 54.3 percent till September this year, compared to the corresponding period last year.
The Central Bank of Oman’s reserves in foreign currency grew 31 percent to $18 billion till the end of December 2021, compared to about $14 billion by the end of December last year.
Total deposits in the banking sector rose 5.3 percent to RO25.2 billion ($65.54 billion) by the end of October 2021
Meanwhile, the total credit balance granted by local banks grew by 5 percent to RO27.8 billion ($72.3 billion) by the end of October 2021.