Sunday 22 / December / 2024
Oman's economy, and the fallout from the government's plan to get back on track with its austerity-driven budget, continued to dominate the news agenda this week in Oman.
1) As it was the first price hike in petrol in at least 17 years, it comes as no surprise perhaps that the most read story of the week on timesofoman.com was Oman announces revised petrol, diesel price. While the announcement had been expected since the budget was announced the week before the move still created much debate in the Sultanate. The increase in the pumps is introduced today.
2) As part of the state budget, the government announced it would demand more in fees for services, and the timesofoman.com discovered the first to come in play with the Royal Oman Police moving first. Expat visa fees to bring Oman extra millions was the second highest read story, containing our analysis of how much a new OMR20 fee could net authorities
3) Oman must make efforts to retain expat workforce, a column by our Saleh Shaibany drove the third most traffic to our site this week. The Omani's writer's argument that the government should work to retain expat skills and labour to help the economy through 2016 unsurprisingly attracted a variety of views either side of the argument.
4) Oman’s diversifying economy is changing expatriate demographics was exclusive analysis by our journalist Rejimon K. He looked at the ebb and flow of different nationalities working in the Sultanate as its economic priorities have changed over the past year.
5) Number five spot in most read stories illustrates just how much the economy is capturing readers' focus currently. While Income Tax Law approved by Oman’s State Council might once have been mostly of interest to the business community this week the larger audience wanted to know how it might impact them.
