From EV Batteries to Green Steel: The 5 Industries Foreign Investors Are Quietly Building in Oman

Forget the oil wells for a moment. The foreign money flowing into Oman is increasingly ending up in factories, energy plants, and industrial parks. And the list of what those factories will make will surprise you: electric vehicle battery materials, green steel, chemicals, prefabricated homes, and medical technology. This is not a vision on paper anymore. It is a construction schedule.

The Number That Actually Matters Right Now

Oman's total foreign direct investment stock hit RO 30.279 billion by the second quarter of 2025, according to preliminary data from the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI). That headline figure matters, but the more telling story is inside it.

The manufacturing sector posted FDI growth of 28.2% year-on-year in Q2 2025. That followed 27.5% growth in Q1 and 39.8% in Q4 2024. Three consecutive quarters of that kind of momentum means investors are not just signing agreements; they are moving capital into physical plant and equipment.

This is precisely what Oman Vision 2040's private investment priorities were designed to achieve: pulling foreign capital out of the oil sector and into industries that create long-term employment for Omanis.

The 5 Industries Getting Built With Foreign Money

Here is where the money is actually landing:

Industry	Project / Investor	Scale
EV Battery Materials	Silicon anode plant, Duqm	RO 192m ($500m); 2,000t/year rising to 5,000t
Green Hydrogen	ACME Group (India) Phase 2 and 3, Duqm	~$4.2bn expansion; export to Europe and Asia
Green Steel	Jindal Steel SEZ Duqm	RO 1.2bn ($3bn); 5 million tonnes/year capacity
Power Generation	Al Sahil 890MW plant, Duqm	RO 350m ($910m); online April 2028
Medical Technology	Future Fund Oman portfolio	Part of RO 583m, 105-project pipeline

These are not pilot schemes or feasibility studies. The EV battery plant is scheduled for trial production in the second quarter of 2027. The Jindal green steel complex is targeted for completion by end-2028. The 890-megawatt power station, needed to supply electricity to Duqm's growing industrial zone, is already in development.

Who Is Paying for This, and Why They Chose Oman

The investor list reads less like a regional Gulf story and more like a map of the global industrial economy: India's ACME Group for green hydrogen, Jindal Steel for green iron and steel, Chinese and German backers for manufacturing and chemicals, Egyptian investors in infrastructure, and European partners in energy.

The pattern is consistent. Oman is attracting capital in industries where it has a structural advantage: cheap renewable energy potential for green hydrogen, a deepwater port at Duqm that sits between Asia and Europe, and a government willing to offer long-term concessions in a special economic zone with streamlined approvals.

For context, the UAE attracted $45.6 billion in FDI inflows at its recent peak, roughly 3.6 times Oman's figures. But the UAE's FDI is heavily weighted toward finance and real estate. Oman's manufacturing FDI is growing at nearly 30% a year. The two countries are, in a meaningful sense, competing in different categories, and Oman is gaining ground in its category fast.

The 105-Project Machine Most People Have Not Heard Of

Away from the headline Duqm deals, Future Fund Oman, an arm of the Oman Investment Authority, quietly announced 105 projects in medical technologies, renewable energy, and tourism, worth a combined RO 583 million. Around a third of that capital is coming from foreign investors.

This matters because it shows two parallel tracks running at once. One is the billion-dollar industrial megaprojects in Duqm. The other is a much wider, more distributed pipeline of mid-size businesses being seeded across multiple sectors. That second track is where many of the jobs for regular Omanis are likely to emerge, in smaller enterprises across healthcare, technology, and services rather than in heavy industry alone.

Both tracks are covered in the 2024-2025 Vision progress brief, which documents how foreign capital mobilisation has accelerated since the investment law reforms of recent years.

How the Money Actually Moves

The delivery machinery has three main parts. The Special Economic Zone Authority at Duqm (SEZAD) manages land allocation, concessions, and investor support for the port zone. The Oman Investment Authority, through Future Fund Oman, structures co-investment deals and matches foreign capital with Omani projects. And the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion (MCIIP) tracks FDI flows through NCSI and coordinates cross-ministry approvals.

The result is that investors arriving from Germany or India now deal with a single zone authority rather than navigating multiple ministries independently. That streamlining is a deliberate policy shift, and the 28% manufacturing FDI growth number suggests it is having an effect.

Why This Matters for Ordinary Omanis

A steel plant or a hydrogen facility might sound distant from daily life. But consider what comes with them: construction jobs during the build phase, operating jobs once the plant runs, demand for local suppliers and service businesses in the surrounding area, and tax and royalty revenues that flow into the public budget.

The EV battery materials plant alone will employ technical workers at a scale Oman has not previously had in that sector. The 105 Future Fund projects, spread across healthcare and technology, are targeting exactly the kind of professional jobs that young Omanis entering the workforce are looking for.

The foreign capital is not charity. It is coming because investors see a return. But the consequence for Omanis is that the economy diversifying away from oil is no longer just a strategy document; it is a construction site.