Six years in the past this month, Sultan Haitham bin Tariq inherited a rustic on the brink. Oman’s beloved ruler of almost half a century had simply died, oil costs had cratered, the COVID-19 pandemic was about to close down the world, and the sultanate’s debt was spiraling towards 70 % of GDP. Credit standing businesses had already downgraded Oman to junk standing. The Worldwide Financial Fund (IMF) was forecasting that the financial system would shrink by 10 %—the worst contraction within the Gulf.
It was, by any measure, the worst doable second to imagine energy in a petrostate.
Six years in the past this month, Sultan Haitham bin Tariq inherited a rustic on the brink. Oman’s beloved ruler of almost half a century had simply died, oil costs had cratered, the COVID-19 pandemic was about to close down the world, and the sultanate’s debt was spiraling towards 70 % of GDP. Credit standing businesses had already downgraded Oman to junk standing. The Worldwide Financial Fund (IMF) was forecasting that the financial system would shrink by 10 %—the worst contraction within the Gulf.
It was, by any measure, the worst doable second to imagine energy in a petrostate.
But now, as Oman marks the sixth anniversary of Sultan Haitham’s accession, the transformation is exceptional. Newly topped monarchs within the Center East generally tend to have a good time by spending massive on vainness tasks—whether or not or not they’ll afford them. Haitham is a rarity: He reduce spending. Public debt has been slashed to 34 % of GDP. Credit score rankings have climbed again to funding grade. International direct funding had surged by 121 % by 2023. The fiscal deficit has change into a surplus. And Oman is now positioning itself as a worldwide chief in inexperienced hydrogen—the vitality supply that would outline the following century.
This can be a story about competent governance at a time when competence within the Gulf is usually overshadowed by spectacle. Whereas Saudi Arabia builds mirror cities within the desert and the United Arab Emirates races to Mars, Oman has quietly demonstrated one thing maybe extra priceless: that regular, technocratic administration can pull a rustic from disaster to stability in simply 5 years.
Sultan Haitham didn’t inherit his predecessor’s charisma, and he doesn’t fake to. Sultan Qaboos bin Mentioned was the area’s philosopher-king—a cultured, enigmatic patron of the humanities who established symphony orchestras and wrote poetry. He was the Arab world’s longest-serving ruler, and his private relationships had been central to Oman’s position because the Gulf’s indispensable mediator. Qaboos may choose up the cellphone and speak to anybody from Tehran to Washington, and either side would pay attention.
Haitham is reduce from totally different material. The place Qaboos was the diplomat-artist, Haitham is the supervisor. His background is in heritage preservation and bureaucratic planning—he spent 18 years working the Ministry of Heritage and Tradition, and, critically, chaired the committee that drafted Oman Imaginative and prescient 2040. He understands spreadsheets greater than symphonies.
This distinction in type has proved to be exactly what Oman wanted. Qaboos’s grand diplomatic imaginative and prescient was admirable, however his financial administration was lax. Even through the oil increase of the 2000s, Oman ran fiscal deficits. When Haitham took energy, he confronted a stark selection: keep the previous manner of doing issues and watch the nation collapse or impose self-discipline that will be deeply unpopular.
He selected self-discipline. Inside months, he ordered authorities businesses to finish 70 % of international professional contracts and retire 70 % of long-serving officers. He launched the Medium-Time period Fiscal Plan, which really contained spending—a radical idea in a area accustomed to utilizing oil windfalls as quick as they arrive. He launched a value-added tax, and in 2025, he turned the primary Gulf chief to impose a private revenue tax on excessive earners. These are politically dangerous strikes in nations the place the social contract is constructed on oil wealth flowing to residents, not taxes flowing from them.
The outcomes communicate for themselves. Oman’s debt-to-GDP ratio has been reduce in half. The nation achieved a price range surplus of seven.5 % in 2022. Nonhydrocarbon exports have tripled as a share of complete exports because the early 2010s. The financial system that was speculated to implode is now rising steadily, with the IMF projecting almost 4 % development by 2026.
However the actual genius of Haitham’s strategy has been pairing fiscal self-discipline with strategic funding. Whereas reducing waste, he’s been inserting large bets on inexperienced hydrogen—$140 billion price by 2050. In April 2024 alone, Oman signed $11 billion in inexperienced hydrogen offers. The sultanate established Hydrom, a state entity devoted to orchestrating the hydrogen sector, and it launched a number of public sale rounds for tasks that would 1.38 million metric tons of inexperienced hydrogen yearly by 2030. This isn’t vainness spending; it’s an try and construct the financial system that can maintain Oman when the oil runs out—which it would, prior to in neighboring states.
And crucially, Haitham has maintained Oman’s diplomatic neutrality. He’s continued his predecessor’s follow of speaking to everybody—facilitating the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement in 2023, mediating a cease-fire between the USA and Houthi forces in 2025, and holding channels open to Tehran whereas remaining near Washington. This neutrality isn’t simply ethical posturing; it’s sound enterprise. In a area torn by rivalries, being everybody’s pal makes you indispensable.
However there’s a more durable edge to Sultan Haitham’s managerial strategy. Together with debt, he’s additionally been curbing dissent. In 2022, he signed a decree imposing jail sentences of three to seven years for anybody who “challenges” the sultan’s authority—language so broad that it criminalizes nearly any criticism. Activists have been jailed for social media posts about corruption and financial hardship. On the 2020 Muscat Worldwide E book Honest, authorities confiscated greater than 50 titles. The Inner Safety Service retains sweeping powers to detain critics, and Oman stays one of many few nations within the area the place sure options of primary communications platforms corresponding to WhatsApp are repeatedly blocked.
Important challenges stay, they usually’re the type that may’t be solved with fiscal self-discipline or political repression. Youth unemployment hovers round 15 %, reaching greater than 30 % for younger girls. Every year, 55,000 Omanis enter a job market that creates far fewer positions. The federal government’s “Omanization” program—requiring corporations to rent nationals as a substitute of cheaper expatriates—creates tensions with the personal sector, which complains that younger Omanis lack expertise and demand larger wages than the market can bear.
That is the basic entice going through Gulf states: How do you create significant employment for a era of younger residents who count on authorities jobs that not exist, in an financial system nonetheless dominated by state-owned enterprises and depending on expatriate labor? Haitham’s inexperienced hydrogen gambit may ultimately create jobs, however not for years. Within the meantime, unemployed graduates with engineering levels are a political tinderbox. Youth unemployment sparked the 2011 protests in Oman; it may spark them once more.
After which there’s the elephant within the room: oil costs. For all of Oman’s spectacular fiscal consolidation, 70 % of presidency revenues nonetheless come from hydrocarbons. If costs collapse once more, the margin for error in Haitham’s plan will disappear.
Lastly, there’s succession. Not like Qaboos, who left no inheritor and shrouded the succession in thriller till his loss of life, Haitham moved rapidly to set up a crown prince—his eldest son, Theyazin bin Haitham—and formalized primogeniture succession. That is good coverage. However Theyazin is younger, and the reforms that Haitham has launched will take a long time to completely mature. The following era of management will inherit each alternatives and pressures that would simply overwhelm them.
Nonetheless, 5 years in, Haitham has demonstrated one thing uncommon in Center Jap management: the power to make laborious selections and make them work. He hasn’t promised his individuals a glittering way forward for megaprojects and moonshots. He’s promised them stability, cautious planning, and a gradual transition away from oil dependence. It’s not a imaginative and prescient that evokes viral movies or worldwide headlines. However in a area vulnerable to each hubris and disaster, competent administration is likely to be probably the most revolutionary act of all.
On the sixth anniversary of his rule, Sultan Haitham deserves credit score not for being charismatic, however for being efficient. That will sound like faint reward. Within the Center East, it’s something however.
