The Ministry of Finance (MOF) published in this week’s issue of the Official Gazette the Executive Regulation of the Public Debt Law, providing practical implementation details for the Public Debt Law that was issued back in 2023.
The Secretariat General of the Tender Board issued a new circular last month banning government entities from contracting with private sector companies that do not comply with Omanisation percentages.
You can read the circular in full in English below:
The Central Bank of Oman (CBO) issued last week the Regulatory Framework for Digital Banks. This regulatory framework sets the requirement for establishing a digital bank, creates two categories for digital banks, sets minimum capital requirements, restrictions on the activities for different digital bank categories, and progressive Omanisation percentages that increase over a period of five years, licensing conditions, and the requirements to present a business plan to obtain the license, among other things.
The legal framework regulating the practice of foreign lawyers in the Sultanate of Oman was fundamentally reshaped by the new Advocacy and Legal Consultancy Law, issued by Royal Decree 41/2024, and the Executive Regulation of the Advocacy and Legal Consultancy Law issued by the Ministry of Justice and Legal Affairs Decision 66/2025. Some of the most significant changes by this new legal framework are the rules governing the practice of foreign lawyers in Oman. This blog post will highlight the key implication that this new law would have for foreign lawyers wishing to work in private practice in Oman.
The Ministry of Social Development published in this weeks issue of the Official Gazette a new Governance Regulation of Social Welfare Institutions that aim to provide welfare services to the elderly.
The regulation covers matters such as the objectives of welfare homes, the conditions for admitting an elderly person to an elderly home, the conditions for volunteering at a welfare home, and the actions to be taken when an elderly person dies in a welfare home.
It is worth noting that the MOSD issued late last year a Governance Regulation of Temporary Welfare Institutions that aims to provide services for women, children and victims of human trafficking.
The new Governance Regulation of Social Welfare Institutions enters into force tomorrow. You can read in full in English on the link below:
The Oman Legal Citation Standard (OLCS) was first launched in 2016 as a guide for creating a standard format for citing Omani legal authorities in academic works and legal documents. The previous version of the OLCS only covered the rules for citing Omani legislation of all levels. We updated the OLCS to include new rules for citing Omani court judgments as well as Ministry of Justice and Legal Affairs fatwas.
Last month, the Ministry of Transport, Communications, and Information Technology (MTCIT) issued Oman’s first policy for governing the use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. This policy was issued in the form of a circular, and therefore it is not a strictly binding legal document published in the Official Gazette.
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Lex AI Update
We received a lot of feedback from the use of Lex AI by the members of Decree over the past couple of weeks, and this enabled us to better understand how our members use the service and the kind of answers they expect. Based on this feedback, we made several changes to Lex AI:
– Lex AI is now fully conversational and appears as a chat thread to make it easier for the user to continue conversing with Lex. Even though the original version of Lex had conversational capabilities, the tool behaved more as a single question single answer tool.
– Lex AI question box now allows you to insert a larger amount of text that appears as a paragraph block. The original version of Lex accepted a smaller amount of text that was limited to a single line in the search box.
– Lex AI now lets you copy the text using a share button under each response message. This is useful for individuals who need to use the answers generated by Lex.
– To improve the quality of the answers, Lex by default will not include in its analysis any repealed law. If the user wishes for repealed laws to be considered, the user would have to check a new box for this above the chat box message. This is usually necessary for comparing differences between an old and a new law.
– We also made some technical improvements to the logic of Lex to improve the quality of the answers.
Decree members on all membership bundles have free access to Lex AI until the end of May. If you have not used it until now, we highly encourage you to do so. Please make sure to use the vote buttons to help us improve the service.
The constitution of the Sultanate of Oman, formally known as the Basic Statute of the State, is the supreme legislative document in the country. It governs the operation of the institutions of the state and determines the relationship of the states with all individuals while providing structure and clarity on the operation of the government. The Basic Statute of the State was issued by His Majesty Sultan Qaboos through Royal Decree 101/96 in the year 1996 as a gift to the people of Oman. Since then, it was amended twice, in 2011 and 2021. This blog post will outline the status of the legal system before 1996, before outlining the changes made to the Basic Statute of the State throughout the years.
Book Two of the Basic Statute of the State, i.e. the Omani constitution, lays down the foundation for how the state functions as well as its main priorities. While the Basic Statute of the State as a whole is rich in constitutional guidance, Book Two is especially notable for how it comprehensively maps out the principles that shape Oman’s political, economic, social, and cultural trajectory. This blog post highlights the key principles found in this extremely important part of the Omani constitution.