Quarterly Data Through June · Monthly Indicators Through August 2026
Oman Economic Update — Q2 2026
Economic activity, prices, monetary conditions, public finance, external trade, and the labour market. Compiled by The Firm from NCSI Monthly Statistical Bulletins (to September 2026), the CBO Quarterly Statistical Bulletin (June 2026), the CBO Monthly Statistical Bulletin (August 2026), the CBO Annual Report 2025, CBO stability reports, Ministry of Finance bulletins, closing accounts and budget, and the IMF and S&P country assessments.
1 · Latest Monthly Developments — Through August 2026
The spike has unwound almost as fast as it arrived. Omani crude averaged $124.1/bbl in May, then $104.7 in June, $102.0 in July and $79.1 in August — a 22.5% drop in a single month. Production held near 1.17mn b/d, export values through July were up 17.8% y/y, and consumer inflation kept climbing, reaching 3.41% in August. On 17 September the CBO raised its repo rate by 25bp to 4.50%, tracking the Fed — the first increase since July 2023.
Oil Price By Month, 2026 — US$/bbl
Average monthly realised price of Omani crude. The May peak has now largely unwound.
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Monthly Trade Flows, 2026 — RO Million
Monthly values as published in each bulletin; later issues revise them, so months need not sum exactly to the published cumulative totals.
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2 · Economic Activity (Q2 2026)
The quarter's growth was overwhelmingly petroleum. Crude and gas added 14.7% in real terms, while the non-oil economy managed just +0.7% — construction (−4.6%), transport (−4.0%) and hospitality (−7.1%) all contracted, and only finance (+8.1%), non-oil mining (+6.2%) and health (+5.8%) grew strongly. For the first half as a whole, real GDP grew 3.8% and nominal GDP 12.7% to RO 23.30bn. Producer prices, meanwhile, exploded 32.7% as the oil price passed straight through to producer revenues.
Real GDP Growth By Activity — Q2 2026, % y/y
Constant prices. Headline aggregates in dark blue; sub-sectors in light blue; contractions in red. Full sector detail in the table.
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Inflation Keeps Climbing — CPI, % y/y By Month
Monthly year-on-year inflation, as published. Quarterly averages: Q1 2026 2.33%, Q2 2026 3.26%. August's 3.41% was led by food and non-alcoholic beverages (+7.0%), within which vegetables rose 19.0%, and by transport (+8.5%); housing and utilities fell 0.6%.
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Producer Prices Surge On The Oil Pass-Through — PPI, Q2 2026, % y/y
The general PPI rose 32.7% y/y and 33.0% on the quarter, led by refined petroleum products (+88.2%). With consumer inflation averaging 3.26% over the same quarter, the gap between what producers receive and what households pay is the widest in the published series.
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The 2025 Baseline And The CBO's 2026 View
CBO Annual Report 2025. The 2026 figures are the Central Bank's own baseline projection, prepared on information available as of June 2026 and assuming an average oil price of $81.0/bbl — close to the H1 outturn of $80.9.
3 · Monetary & Banking
The oil windfall is showing up directly in the money supply: M1 rose 27.3% y/y and M2 14.2% by end-August, while growth in claims on the private sector picked up to 11.8%, from 10.4% at end-June. The CBO held the repo rate at 4.25% through August; the overnight interbank rate firmed to 3.73% while average lending and deposit rates were broadly unchanged. The banking system stayed well capitalised, with liquidity coverage at 160% at end-June. On 17 September the CBO raised the repo rate to 4.50% — its first increase since July 2023 — following the US Fed's quarter-point move, consistent with the rial's dollar peg. Over the past two years, policy easing reached the interbank market but barely moved what bank customers pay or earn: the repo rate fell 175bp, while average lending and deposit rates fell only around 30bp each.
Broad Money And Private-Sector Credit — RO Million, Quarterly
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Rates, Reserves And Soundness — August 2026
CBO Monthly Statistical Bulletin, end-August 2026, with the end-June reading for comparison. Growth rates are year-on-year. Capital adequacy, NPL and liquidity coverage are published quarterly and remain at end-June, compared with end-March.
Policy Cuts Reached The Interbank Market, Not Bank Customers — % Per Annum, Monthly
CBO Monthly Statistical Bulletin, August 2026. The repo rate is the monthly average on CBO repo operations, drawn as steps; lending and deposit rates are weighted averages on conventional banks' rial loans and deposits across all sectors. Between August 2024 and August 2026 the repo rate fell 175bp and the overnight interbank rate 140bp, but the average lending rate fell only 28bp and the average deposit rate 33bp, so the lending–deposit spread held near 2.9 points. The CBO raised the repo rate to 4.50% on 17 September 2026, after the period shown.
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4 · Fiscal
The budget was essentially balanced through June — a deficit of RO 17mn against RO 259mn a year earlier — as gas revenue rose 32% and net oil revenue 10%. Spending grew 9%, with development spending up 16% and running at 61% of its full-year budget; economic-transformation projects took RO 146mn of a RO 400mn allocation. Public debt was broadly flat at RO 14.16bn, and the H1 realised oil price of $74/bbl ran well above the $60 budget assumption. Behind the flat total, the mix is shifting: since the start of 2024 the government has repaid a net RO 2.1bn of external debt while borrowing a net RO 0.9bn at home, taking the external share of debt from 76% in 2021 to about 66% at end-2025.
H1 Revenue Vs Spending — RO Million
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H1 2026 Revenue Mix — RO Million
Total revenue RO 6,602mn (+13% y/y). Hydrocarbons — net oil plus gas — supplied 68% of it, up from 67% a year earlier.
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Public Debt: Domestic Vs External — RO Billion, End-Period
Central government debt. The label above each column is the external share. 2021–2024 and June 2025: CBO Macroeconomic Stability Report 2025 (domestic is total less external). 2025: IMF 2025 Article IV staff estimate (Country Report 26/4). June 2026: total from the Ministry of Finance Q2 2026 bulletin; its domestic–external split is not yet published. The CBO Financial Stability Report 2025 gives a slightly lower end-2024 total, RO 14.4bn.
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How The Debt Is Being Financed — Net Borrowing, RO Million
Net borrowing is new loans and issuance less repayments. 2024 and 2025: Ministry of Finance closing accounts for 2025; H1 2026: Ministry of Finance data as reported in the NCSI September 2026 bulletin. The 2026 budget plans RO 902mn of gross domestic and RO 990mn of gross external borrowing against RO 1,762mn of maturing debt, and names deepening the local bond market — so that it provides benchmark interest rates for private-sector lending — among its aims.
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5 · External Trade
The price spike transformed the external accounts. H1 exports rose 15.3% to RO 13.24bn while imports grew only 2.1%, lifting the merchandise surplus 51% to RO 4.68bn. Oil and gas values were up 16.5%, with LNG the standout at +40.4%. Non-oil exports rose 11.4% on provisional customs data; the CBO's revised series also shows growth (+5.5% in H1) but remains RO 0.2bn below the NCSI print — the two sources have still not reconciled. On the latest full-year balance of payments (2024), a RO 9.9bn goods surplus became a RO 1.2bn current-account surplus once services, investment income and workers' remittances are counted.
H1 Trade Flows — RO Million
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H1 2026 Export Composition — RO Million
Oil and gas were 65% of merchandise exports, against 64% a year earlier. Every category grew by double digits in value terms.
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Top 5 Import Sources — Jan–Jul 2026, RO Million
Turkey's more-than-fivefold increase and a 42% rise from China are the year's two biggest shifts in sourcing.
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Top 5 Non-Oil Export Markets — Jan–Jul 2026, RO Million
The UAE has doubled as a destination while Saudi Arabia and South Korea fell sharply — a marked concentration of non-oil trade.
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Top 5 Re-Export Destinations — Jan–Jul 2026, RO Million
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Non-Oil Exports In Focus — RO Million, Quarterly
CBO revised series, which excludes re-exports. Q2 2026 eased to RO 1,687mn, +2.1% y/y, after the strongest quarter in the CBO's series since 2023. Mineral products fell RO 331mn on the quarter — far more than the RO 79mn total decline — with chemicals, base metals and plastics offsetting most of it.
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Non-Oil Exports By Commodity — Q2 2026, RO Million
CBO revised series. Chemicals (+49%), base metals (+38%) and plastics (+16%) drove the quarter; mineral products halved.
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Crude Oil Export Destinations — 2024, Million Barrels
Latest published direction data; the CBO's destination table still lags by six quarters. China took 94% of crude volumes — a concentration worth watching against the 2026 price swing. Components may not sum to the published total because of rounding.
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Rial Effective Exchange Rate (NEER) — Index, 1999 = 100
End of period. With the dollar peg fixed, the rial's effective rate moves with the dollar. The import-weighted index eased to 116.8 at end-June from 117.1, but is still 3.2% above a year earlier — a mild headwind for non-oil export competitiveness. The CBO's August monthly bulletin puts it at 116.7.
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Import Price Index — Q2 2026, % y/y
NCSI, 2018 = 100. Overall import prices rose 11.7% y/y (+2.0% q/q). Mineral fuels and lubricants were up 45.5%, the largest single contributor at roughly 2.6 points of the 11.7%; machinery — a third of the basket — was broadly flat.
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From A RO 9.9bn Goods Surplus To A RO 1.2bn Current Account — 2024, RO Million
Latest published balance of payments: CBO Quarterly Statistical Bulletin, June 2026 (2024 preliminary); only annual data are published so far. With lower oil prices, the current account turned to a deficit of about 1.1% of GDP in 2025 (CBO Annual Report 2025; IMF), and workers' remittances rose 3.1%. The CBO's 2026 projection of a surplus of about 4% of GDP is shown in section 2; S&P (September 2026) expects 3.5%.
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6 · Foreign Direct Investment — Q2 2026
The FDI stock edged up to RO 32.21bn, around three-quarters of annual GDP, but the pace has slowed sharply: net inflows were RO 1.93bn in Q2, down 44% on a year earlier, and the stock's growth computes to 4.2% y/y. Concentration is unchanged — oil and gas exploration holds 80% of the stock, and the UK and the US together 79% of the source capital.
FDI Stock By Activity — End-Q2 2026, RO Million
Hover for the year-on-year change and the Q2 net flow. Preliminary quarterly data.
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FDI Stock By Source Country — End-Q2 2026, RO Million
Top five sources plus all others. The UK alone holds over half the stock, and supplied RO 1.04bn of the RO 1.93bn Q2 inflow.
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7 · Labour Market & Population — August 2026
Omani private-sector employment keeps doing the heavy lifting — 445,799 workers, 5,671 more than in July alone — while government headcount slipped by 2,516 in the month. The job-seeker rate held at 2.4%, but the youth (15–24) job-seeker rate is 14.0% and the female rate 6.0%. Population passed 5.43 million, with the expatriate share drifting up to 43.4%.
Omani Employment By Sector — August 2026
Workers registered with the Royal Oman Police, end-August versus end-July 2026. NCSI's printed annual percentage changes cannot be reproduced from its own level columns, so they are not shown.
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Population & Job-Seeker Snapshot
NCSI / Royal Oman Police, end-August 2026. Job-seeker rates are a percentage of the relevant labour force.
8 · Trends Across Quarters
Ten quarters of headline series, Q1 2024 – Q2 2026. The Q2 2026 price spike is visible in every panel: nominal income, export values and the production profile all step up together, while the underlying non-oil economy carries on at a much flatter trajectory.
Nominal GDP — RO Million, Quarterly
Q1 2025, Q2 2025, Q1 2026 and Q2 2026 as published; 2024 and H2 2025 derived from CBO cumulative national accounts. Vintages differ slightly — the September 2026 bulletin's H1 total implies a small upward revision to Q1 2026.
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Merchandise Trade — RO Million, Quarterly
CBO Quarterly Bulletin cumulative totals differenced into quarters; imports on the CBO's recorded-imports basis. The Q2 2026 export figure is a residual of the H1 total — NCSI customs data put the quarter nearer RO 7.9bn. Section 5 uses NCSI provisional customs data throughout.
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Oman Crude — Average Price, US$/bbl
Quarterly averages: 2025–26 as published by the CBO, 2024 derived from CBO cumulative period averages. Q2 2026 at $99.0 is the highest in the period shown.
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Oil Production — Thousand Barrels/Day
Quarterly averages, derived from CBO cumulative daily-production averages; Q2 2026 from CBO quarterly volumes (104.9mn barrels over 91 days). Output has risen every quarter since Q1 2025.
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Past Quarters
Each quarterly snapshot is archived as published. The page you are reading always shows the latest quarter.