The International Monetary Fund (IMF) expected the public debt in the Sultanate of Oman to decline by 2026 to about 47 percent of GDP. It also expected that fiscal consolidation and high oil prices would contribute to reducing the current account deficit to 0.6 percent.
The Omani government commended the report of the International Monetary Fund for the Article 4 consultations for the Sultanate for the year 2021, which comes with the conclusion of the Fund’s experts’ meetings with the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Economy, the Central Bank of Oman and a number of government and private agencies.
The Fund commends the measures taken by the Sultanate to contain the health and economic effects caused by the Corona pandemic, and the efforts made in the comprehensive immunization campaign, strengthening the business environment and supporting the affected economic sectors. The fund expects the gradual recovery of economic activities with the realization of a growth in the real non-oil GDP in the Sultanate by the end of this year by 1.5 percent, to reach 4 percent in 2026, and a surplus in the state’s general budget.
In addition, the final account of the performance of the Sultanate's general budget for the fiscal year 2020 issued by the Ministry of Finance showed that the total actual revenues collected in 2020 amounted to about (22 billion dollars), a decrease of 20.5 percent.
Source (Al-Sharq Al-Awsat Newspaper, Edited)
