{"id":20260,"date":"2024-12-19T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-12-19T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fm.gov.om\/20260\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T11:59:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T11:59:24","slug":"fitch-ratings-revises-outlook-for-oman-to-positive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fm.gov.om\/en\/20260\/","title":{"rendered":"Fitch Ratings revises outlook for Oman to &#8216;Positive&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.fitchratings.com\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Fitch Ratings<\/a> released its latest credit report on Oman, revising the Sultanate&#8217;s outlook from stable to positive. \u00a0It confirms Oman&#8217;s credit rating at BB+.<\/p>\n<p>The upgrade in outlook reflects ongoing government measures to reduce public debt and the debt of state-owned enterprises, maintain fiscal discipline, and increase net sovereign foreign assets.<\/p>\n<p>The agency expects Oman to achieve a fiscal surplus of 2% of GDP in 2024, declining to 0.7% in 2025, and potentially turning into a fiscal deficit of 0.2% in 2026.<\/p>\n<p>These projections are based on Brent crude oil prices averaging $70 per barrel in 2025 and $65 per barrel in 2026, with the fiscal breakeven oil price estimated between $67 and $70 per barrel.<\/p>\n<p>Fitch noted that Oman\u2019s non-oil primary balance is expected to improve gradually due to controlled spending and more efficient tax collection. The non-oil primary deficit as a percentage of non-oil GDP is projected to decrease from 43% in 2020 to 27% in 2024 and to 24% by 2026.<\/p>\n<p>The report forecasts GDP growth of 1.8% in 2024, supported by a 3.7% increase in the non-oil sector. Factors such as rising domestic consumption, foreign investment growth, and an improved tourism sector are expected to drive the non-oil sector\u2019s growth to more than 3% in 2025 and 2026.<\/p>\n<p>Fitch also anticipates a decline in public debt as a percentage of GDP from 37.5% in 2023 to 34% in 2024, reaching 33.3% by 2026.<\/p>\n<p>External debt is expected to decrease by $2.8 billion in 2024, bringing it to around $26.6 billion. Oman\u2019s net sovereign foreign asset position is projected to rise to about 10% of GDP in 2024, compared to -9% of GDP in 2020.<\/p>\n<p>The agency says that Oman\u2019s credit rating could be upgraded if fiscal consolidation efforts continue, public debt as a percentage of GDP decreases further, non-oil revenues grow, and foreign currency reserves increase.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0The agency also confirms Oman&#8217;s credit rating at &#8220;BB+.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19719,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-posts-and-videos","category-trade-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fm.gov.om\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fm.gov.om\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fm.gov.om\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fm.gov.om\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fm.gov.om\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20260"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.fm.gov.om\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32933,"href":"https:\/\/www.fm.gov.om\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20260\/revisions\/32933"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fm.gov.om\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fm.gov.om\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fm.gov.om\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fm.gov.om\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}