Is Vision 2040's Regional Promise Moving Beyond Announcements?

Oman's Vision 2040 carries an explicit promise that development will reach all corners of the country, not just the capital belt. Priority 9, "Development of Governorates and Sustainable Cities," is the formal vehicle for that promise. Five years into the vision period, it has genuine delivery machinery behind it: a dedicated spending programme, a national spatial strategy, and a masterplan for a new city in Salalah that moved from concept to active construction in early 2025. What it does not yet have is a transparent, publicly available metric showing whether the gap between Muscat and the rest of Oman is actually closing.

Key Takeaways

The Governorate Development Programme has delivered or is actively building 1,089 projects across 11 governorates as of mid-2025, up from 941 at end-2024. (Times of Oman)
Royal directives have raised annual per-governorate allocations from an initial OMR 4 million to OMR 20 million. The Eleventh Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) commits OMR 270 million in total to the programme. (Omanet, Zawya)
The Salalah New City masterplan, designed by Sasaki Associates for the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning, was unveiled in March 2025. Construction of the first 5,827 residential units is set to begin the same year. (Designboom)
Muscat Governorate still holds roughly 28-29 percent of Oman's total population and remains the dominant centre of economic activity. (OmanQ, Muscat Daily)
No official public series currently tracks per-governorate GDP contribution or per-capita development spending in a format that allows year-on-year comparison of regional convergence.
Overall, 74 percent of Vision 2040 performance indicators showed measurable progress as of the 2024-2025 annual report, but the report does not break these down by governorate. (Ministry of Finance)

What This Priority Actually Means

Oman has 11 governorates. The bulk of economic activity, public services, private investment, and skilled employment has historically been concentrated in the Muscat region. Vision 2040 uses Priority 9 to push against that concentration through three interlocking ideas: decentralising budget authority to governorates, building smart and sustainable urban infrastructure in secondary cities, and making better use of land through a national spatial strategy.

In plain terms, the question is whether a family in Al Wusta, Al Buraimi, or Musandam is gaining access to economic opportunity, public services, and urban amenity at a pace comparable to families in Muscat. That is a harder thing to measure than project counts or spending totals, which is partly why the official progress narrative tends to lead with inputs rather than outcomes.

The Problem: Muscat's Gravitational Pull

Muscat Governorate's population reached 1,499,549 at end-2024, up 3 percent year-on-year, versus 2 percent national growth. It holds roughly 28-29 percent of a total population of 5.27 million, and that share is rising, not falling. (OmanQ, 2025)

North Al Batinah leads in Omani citizen numbers (597,608), followed by Muscat (584,092) and Ad Dakhiliyah (403,825). But expatriate concentration tells a more pointed story: Muscat alone accounts for 915,457 expatriate residents, far exceeding North Batinah at 328,194. (Muscat Daily, January 2025) Expatriate workers follow economic opportunity, and those numbers suggest opportunity remains stubbornly centralised.

The Oman National Spatial Strategy, issued in 2021, acknowledged directly that many Omanis commute weekly or migrate to Muscat for work, and that spatial-economic growth in other parts of the country needed deliberate incentives. No public follow-up report has since quantified whether those incentives have started to shift migration patterns.

Delivery Machinery: What Is Supposed to Move This

1. The Governorate Development Programme

This is the most concrete operational vehicle. Launched under the Tenth Five-Year Plan (2021-2025), the programme started at OMR 4 million per governorate per year before Royal directives raised the annual ceiling first to OMR 10 million, then to OMR 20 million per governorate. Total actual spending under the programme from 2021 to November 2025 reached approximately OMR 127 million, covering 1,089 active and completed projects at mid-2025 and generating 1,400 direct and 428 indirect jobs. (Times of Oman)

The Eleventh Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) lifts the total programme commitment to OMR 270 million, or roughly OMR 20 million per governorate over the five years. That averages OMR 4 million per governorate per year, the same starting figure as the Tenth Plan, which suggests the per-year rate per governorate has not structurally increased despite the headline expansion. (Omanet) The framing of the Eleventh Plan total as a policy upgrade requires some scrutiny against that arithmetic.

Project categories under the programme are heavily weighted toward visible amenity: parks and walkways (162 projects), road lighting (125 projects), internal road paving (97 projects), general maintenance and land levelling (259 projects), and waterfronts and viewpoints (60 projects). Markets, slaughterhouses, and commercial kiosks account for 80 projects. Flood protection and rainwater drainage, which in interior governorates represents a direct livability constraint, accounts for only 20 projects. The composition reflects local demand but is largely a quality-of-life programme rather than an economic-base programme.

For 2026, the publicly announced flagship projects include Aymas Bay in Musandam, the Nizwa Square Boulevard in Ad Dakhiliyah, and waterfront initiatives in Barka, Al Musannah, and Dhofar. (Zawya, January 2026) SME contract awards have reached 950 since programme inception, which is the most direct evidence of local economic participation.

2. The Oman National Spatial Strategy and Smart Cities

The ONSS, unveiled in March 2021, provides the spatial planning backbone for the priority. It covers a 20-year horizon and mandates structural plans for Greater Muscat, Greater Salalah, Greater Nizwa, and Greater Sohar. The Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning holds lead responsibility.

The practical output to date is the most advanced for Salalah. In March 2025, the Ministry unveiled the Salalah New City masterplan, designed by a consortium led by F&M Middle East and Sasaki Associates. Key parameters: a 7.3 square kilometre footprint, 12,000 residential units for approximately 60,000 residents, 3.5 million square metres of parks and open space, 200,000 square metres of retail, and two hospitals. The design emphasises ten-minute neighbourhoods, climate resilience against the khareef monsoon, and a coastal wetland park as flood defence. First-phase delivery targets 5,827 units, with construction stated to begin in 2025. The full development spans a 22-year horizon to 2045. (Designboom, March 2025; Cundall)

For Nizwa and Suhar, the public record as of early 2026 shows consultant procurement underway but no equivalent masterplan publication. The initial Ministry announcement on all three cities dates to mid-2022; three years later, one city has moved to construction-start stage. That pace is not surprising for projects of this complexity, but it should be noted.

3. The Eleventh Five-Year Plan (2026-2030)

The plan, launched in early 2026, lists economic decentralisation as a strategic objective and frames governorates as active nodes of employment generation rather than just recipients of central spending. It projects 190 strategic programmes across four pillars, targets 700,000 total job opportunities over five years, and allocates OMR 900 million in average annual development expenditure. (Ministry of Finance) Spatial integration, meaning ensuring these programmes reach governorates proportionally rather than defaulting to Muscat, is described as a cross-cutting priority, but the plan document does not publish a governorate-level expenditure matrix.

Assessment: Ahead, On Path, or Behind?

The Governorate Development Programme is broadly on path for its defined scope, which is community infrastructure. Over 1,000 projects across 11 governorates, rising SME participation, and budget allocations that have grown fourfold from their starting level represent genuine delivery momentum. The Eleventh Plan commitment sustains this trajectory.

On the harder test, which is whether economic geography is actually diversifying, the evidence is insufficient to confirm progress. Muscat's population share is not declining. No official series publicly tracks regional GDP contribution annually. The smart-city programme has moved from announcement to masterplan for Salalah, which is a real step, but the full delivery horizon extends two decades and two cities remain in early design phases.

The programme also faces a structural constraint that budget allocation figures alone cannot address: local administrative capacity. The Eleventh Plan explicitly includes training for 50 local officials in spatial and financial planning. That number is small relative to the ambition, and it signals the ministry is aware that project execution at governorate level is still a bottleneck rather than a solved problem.

UAE and Saudi Arabia: A Partial Comparison

A direct comparison on governorate development spending ratios is not possible because neither the UAE nor Saudi Arabia publishes inter-emirate or inter-province expenditure data in a format comparable to Oman's per-governorate allocation model. What can be observed is the strategic framing.

Saudi Arabia has pursued regional diversification through giga-projects anchored outside Riyadh: NEOM in Tabuk, a futuristic development on the northwest coast; and ROSHN, a state-led housing developer targeting 400,000 units by 2030 across multiple regions including the Eastern Province. Saudi homeownership has moved from roughly 47 percent in 2016 to an estimated 63-65 percent by 2024 against a 70 percent Vision 2030 target. (Founders Club International) The Saudi model uses sovereign capital vehicles at a scale that dwarfs Oman's programme budget; NEOM alone has drawn multi-hundred-billion-dollar commitments, though delivery has been scaled back since initial announcements.

The UAE presents a structural contrast rather than a comparable model. Its seven emirates each control their own development budgets; Abu Dhabi and Dubai each have independent urban masterplanning agencies with resources that are not pooled centrally. Ras Al Khaimah and Sharjah have attracted distinct development pipelines, including a Wynn casino resort opening in 2027 and a new exhibition complex respectively. The UAE's approach to regional balance is therefore through competitive emirate-level positioning rather than a central equalisation mechanism, which makes it a poor comparator for Oman's challenge.

The more useful observation is that Oman's per-governorate allocation model, now at OMR 20 million per cycle, is delivering community-level amenity that neither Saudi giga-projects nor UAE emirate competition is designed to replicate. The question is whether that model can scale to economic diversification, not just improved parks.

Caveats and Data Gaps

No regional GDP series: The National Centre for Statistics and Information publishes national GDP by sector but not a consistent governorate-level gross regional domestic product series. Without this, it is impossible to verify whether economic activity is actually dispersing from Muscat.
Spending vs. programme spending: The figure of OMR 507 million in governorate development spending across the Tenth Five-Year Plan appears to refer to all capital development spending channelled through or for governorates, not solely the Governorate Development Programme itself. The programme's own figure of OMR 127 million from 2021 to November 2025 is the more specific and verifiable number. The two figures should not be conflated.
Smart city timelines: The Salalah New City masterplan is the most credible near-term signal of large-scale urban transformation. However, a 22-year delivery horizon means any accountability assessment before 2030 can only judge whether phase one is on track, not whether the overall concept is delivering.
Vision 2040 indicator breakdown: The 74 percent progress figure reported in the 2024-2025 annual report is a national aggregate. The published report does not disaggregate performance by governorate or confirm that regional equity indicators are among those showing progress.
Allocation vs. disbursement: Official reporting on the Governorate Development Programme reports committed and completed projects but does not consistently publish undisbursed versus disbursed allocation balances at governorate level. In the Tenth Plan, 68 percent of allocated funds were committed by end-2024, per earlier state budget documentation.

Why This Matters for Oman

Regional imbalance in Oman is not a technocratic abstraction. The popular unrest of 2011-2012 had a strong geographical dimension, with demonstrations concentrated in Sohar and Salalah rather than Muscat, reflecting frustration at a perceived gap between capital-city prosperity and provincial economic stagnation. Vision 2040 exists in part as a response to that gap.

The current delivery picture shows a programme that is genuinely active but still primarily providing amenity rather than economic transformation. One thousand parks, viewpoints, and paved roads are measurable improvements in daily life. They are not, by themselves, the structural change that would close a regional development gap measurable in jobs, incomes, and household access to competitive services.

The Salalah New City project, if it executes on its first phase, could become the most significant demonstration that Vision 2040's regional ambition can produce urban transformation at scale outside Muscat. The 22-year timeline is long, but first-phase construction beginning in 2025 is a concrete signal that the project has moved from planning to ground. The next critical checkpoint is whether Nizwa and Suhar achieve equivalent masterplan clarity by 2027, and whether the Eleventh Five-Year Plan produces a spatial expenditure framework that can be publicly tracked year by year.