Oman’s nominal GDP for first nine months drops to OMR17.48b

Muscat: Oman’s gross domestic product (GDP) at market prices, which is popularly known as nominal GDP, plunged by 11.1 per cent to OMR17.48 billion for the first nine months of 2016, against OMR19.65 billion for the same January-September period of 2015.
This was against the government’s projection of a 3 per cent annual GDP growth, made at the beginning of the year.
A 28.9 per cent drop in average price of Oman Crude (to $40.1 per barrel) in international markets last year substantially pulled down the country’s revenue from hydrocarbon activities by 35.1 per cent to OMR4.64 billion from as high as OMR7.15 billion during the January-September period, according to the latest monthly statistics released by the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI).
Total wealth generated from crude oil activities plummeted by 40.6 per cent to OMR3.72 billion during the January-September period of 2016, while the contribution of natural gas in total gross domestic product rose by 3.8 per cent to OMR925.2 million in the first nine months of 2016.
Besides, non-oil activities edged down by 0.2 per cent to OMR13.43 billion for the first nine months from OMR13.45 billion during the January-September period of 2015.
Among the non-oil sectors, industrial activities, which mainly comprise mining and quarrying and manufacturing, declined by 4.3 per cent to OMR3.72 billion from OMR3.88 billion during the period under review.
Of this, the manufacturing sector activities alone fell by 18.9 per cent to OMR1.52 billion during the January-September period of last year.
Also, mining and quarrying grew by 3.2 per cent to OMR109.1 million, whereas activities of other manufacturing industries dropped by 10.3 per cent to OMR958.1 million from OMR1,068 million during the nine-month period.
However, agriculture and fishing activities registered a healthy growth of 15.3 per cent to OMR372.3 million from OMR323 million.
Further, services activities edged up by 1 per cent to OMR9,336.4 million in the first nine months of 2016 from OMR9,244.2 million for the same period of the previous year.
Among services activities, real estate sector showed a robust growth of 6.3 per cent at OMR950.5 million during the first nine months of 2016 from OMR893.9 million for the same period of the previous year.