Development of infrastructure was at the core of late His Majesty’s vision

Muscat: Roads, ports, and airports are a vital necessity, whether for developmental and economic considerations or for strategic and social considerations.
Late His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said bin Taimour - since he assumed the reins of government in the country on July 23 of 1970, paid special attention to network of modern and advanced roads, connecting the Sultanate with the world through ports and airports that are able to keep pace with the tremendous development in various means of communication with the world.
Everyone in the Sultanate is aware of the rapid development of the road network in terms of quality and size of the network despite the difficult terrain. This is due to the keenness of the late His Majesty Sultan Qaboos bin Said in facilitating the movement of citizens between the various regions and villages and shortening time the journey to alleviate their sufferings .
This made the Sultanate’s road network as arteries with which the movement of development and economic and social prosperity moved to all parts of the Sultanate spanning the plain, the mountain and the valley, and all the governorates and Wilayats of the Sultanate were linked to each other with a modern road network according to the latest international standards.
There were only a few kilometres of paved roads in 1970 comparing to nearly 40,000 kilometres of paved roads in the Sultanate until the end of 2019.
The building of highways is an important step to achieve the required growth because of the expansion of development to accommodate the growth in traffic and economic activities, and to push the development of many sectors forward.
Major achievements
Perhaps Al Batinah Expressway and Al Sharqiyah Expressway are the biggest examples of the major achievements in the road network that were achieved in the blessed renaissance march.
The Ministry of Transport has classified and numbered roads in the Sultanate, as roads in the Sultanate have been classified into five groups (national, arterial, secondary, distributed, and local roads) according to the importance of each road and its engineering characteristics, taking into consideration raising the rating of classification and numbering of some existing roads to ensure the improvement of these roads in the future and to keep pace with the development of a network roads as a result of the continuous economic growth in the Sultanate.
Oman has been ranked first in the Arab world and the eighth globally in road quality, and 12th globally in road connectivity.