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Law Updates

New Omani Nationality Law Issued

The new Omani Nationality Law was published in this week’s issue of the Official Gazette which repeals the Omani Nationality Law of 2014 and lowers the requirements for obtaining Omani nationality.

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Article

Duties of the Council of Ministers

The Government of the Sultanate of Oman is built upon the principle of the separation of powers among the executive, legislative, and judiciary branches of government. The Council of Ministers represents the executive branch, Majlis Oman serves as the legislative body, and the Supreme Judicial Council oversees the judiciary. This blog post will explore the role of the key player in the executive branch of the government: The Council of Ministers.

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Law Updates

Extension of the Grace Period to Comply with Data Protection Regulation

The Ministry of Transport, Communications, and Information Technology (MTCIT) published Decision 6/2025 in this week’s issue of the Official Gazette extending the deadline for complying with the provisions of the Executive Regulation of the Personal Data Protection Law by one additional year.

Entities subject to this regulation were originally required to comply with its provisions by February 2025, and this new amendment changes this deadline to February 2026.

Even though this technically relates to the Executive Regulation and not the actual Personal Data Protection Law, which in theory entered into force in February 2023, the extension of the deadline for complying with the executive regulation effectively means that neither the law or the regulation will not be enforced in Oman until February 2026.

You can read the consolidated version of the Executive Regulation of the Personal Data Protection Law by clicking on the link below:

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Law Updates

New Amendment to the Penal Law

His Majesty Sultan Hitham issued yesterday Royal Decree 11/2025 amending article 71 of Omani Penal Law. The previous text of article 71 gave the courts the power to stay the execution of a punishment, i.e. choose not to implement it, if the circumstances of the convict justify this (such his age or the history of his behaviour).

The new amendment to article 71 of the Penal Law limits the ability of the court to choose not to implement a punishment by stipulating that this power of the court is only available in regard to punishments other than those relating to state security crimes, offenses that undermine the stature of the state, or terrorism and terrorism financing crimes.

This means that if someone is convicted in one of these newly listed crimes, the court has no choice but to implement the punishment imposed against them and the judge will not have the power to stay the execution of these punishments no matter the circumstances of the convict.

This new amendment will enter into force next week. You can read the full texts of Royal Decree 11/2025 in English on the link below:

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Article

Paths to Omani Nationality Under the Law

Now that it has been established that obtaining an Omani passport does not equate to obtaining Omani nationality, this post will explore the paths set by the Omani Nationality Law promulgated by Royal Decree 38/2014 for obtaining Omani nationality. Pursuant to this law, there are three paths for obtaining nationality in Oman: by origin, by reinstatement, and by grant from His Majesty the Sultan. This post will provide details on each one of these three paths.

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Law Updates

CBO Issues ESG Circular

In October last year, the Central Bank of Oman (CBO) issued a circular on “Promoting Sustainable and Green Financial Practices“. The circular clarifies the phases in which ESG should be implemented in banks, with the circular itself being part of “Phase 2: Regulatory Expectations 2024”. The next phase is going to be during the period 2025-2027, and is named “Phase 3: Implementation and Monitoring”.

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Announcements

2025: What’s Next for Decree?

The year 2024 was a big year for Decree. In terms of content, Decree remains the biggest and most comprehensive database of English-translated Omani legislation ever created, and this year alone, we added more than 500 new and old legislative items to our catalogue, including essentially every single new royal decree and ministerial decision published in the Official Gazette in 2024.

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Article

Types of Passports under the Omani Passports Law

The Omani passport and the Omani nationality are closely interlinked topics, but they are governed by two separate pieces of legislation: The Law of the Omani Passport and the Omani Nationality Law. A passport is a travel document given by a state, but it does not equate to nationality. In this blog post, we are going to highlight the six different kinds of passports or travel documents available in Oman and the conditions for obtaining them, which as will be illustrated below, does not always require Omani nationality.

The types of passports are determined by the Law of the Omani Passport. However, due to the fact that some types of passports are issued by the Foreign Ministry, and not the Royal Oman Police, certain provisions relating to those passports are also governed by the Law Governing the Foreign Ministry.

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Special Feature

Royal Decrees of 2024: The Year in Review

69 royal decrees were issued in the year 2024 that had a transformational impact on the economy and the Omani legal system at large, from the promulgation of a new Advocacy and Legal Consultancy Law and a new System for Signing Government Contracts, to the creation of a new Financial Services Authority and the appointment of a new Chairman for the Tax Authority. This blog post reviews the most significant royal decrees that came out this year.

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Special Feature

Decree Picks of the Year 2024

As we wrap up the month of December, we thought it would be fun to ask members of the Decree team to tell us about the legal developments that they personally found to be most interesting in the year 2024. To allow for some diversity in the answers, nobody was allowed to mention the new Advocacy and Legal Consultancy Law in their answers, since this was the biggest legislative development for the legal profession in Oman in a very long time.