Subsea cables are fundamental to the operation of the global internet as they connect continents and allow data to be exchanged between them at high speeds. Oman plays a critical role in this industry due to its strategic location on the Indian Ocean, making it a potential hub for internet connection between South Asia, the Arabian Peninsula, and East Africa. Oman also has the only subsea cable connecting the GCC to Australia—a critical piece of digital infrastructure for the digital industry in both regions.

Prior to this new Regulation Governing International Telecommunications Cables issued by the TRA, Oman did not have a formal legal framework for governing the subsea cable industry. The new regulation stipulates that any company can apply for the approval of the TRA to install a subsea cable. If the application is approved, the applicant must pay a fee of 200,000 Rial Omani for a 15-year permit. In certain cases, the TRA may make an exemption for the payment of this fee if the subsea cable is connected to an international cable landing station or terrestrial connection station.

Subsea cable service providers are now also required to obtain approval to maintain, repair, and survey subsea cables in Omani waters. The fee for obtaining this approval is 500 Rial Omani. Holders of licences to provide international fixed public telecommunications are exempt from the payment of this fee.

In addition to outlining the process for obtaining approvals, the regulation also sets out obligations and prohibitions associated with the laying, maintenance, repair, and survey of subsea cable, as well as the penalties for violating the regulation.

The Regulation Governing International Telecommunications Cables has already entered into force. You can read it in full in English on the link below:

His Majesty issued by royal decree a new Advocacy and Legal Consultancy Law in October of last year, which repealed the Advocacy Law of 1996 and introduced a major reform of the legal profession in Oman. The new Advocacy and Legal Consultancy Law splits the legal profession into two separate activities: advocacy and legal consultancy, with advocacy essentially covering all the activities of the legal profession—such as giving legal advice, drafting contracts, and providing litigation services, while legal consultancy covers the same activities with the exception of litigation services. Both advocacy offices and legal consultancy offices are also permitted to do arbitration work.

The framework created by the new law requires advocacy work to be exclusively delivered by advocacy offices that can only hire Omani advocates, while legal consultancy work must be exclusively delivered by legal consultancy offices that can only hire Omani and non-Omani legal consultants and no advocates. This means that if a law firm wishes to provide litigation services, this law firm must be registered as an advocacy office, and it will not be able to hire any non-Omani lawyer. If a law firm wishes to hire any non-Omani lawyers, this law firm must be registered as a legal consultancy office, and it will not be able to provide litigation services. The law also introduced new provisions that permit international law firms to open a branch in Oman in the form of a legal consultancy office without having a local partner.

In addition to this new classification, the law creates new qualification and continuous development requirements for advocates that an advocate is required to meet to move up the rolls that enable the advocate to appear before higher court levels.

While the law had comprehensive details of how advocates are admitted and qualified, it did not provide details on how legal consultants would be admitted, and left this matter to the executive regulation of the law, which was published this past Sunday.

The Executive Regulation of the Adovcacy and Legal Consultancy Law stipulates that for an Omani lawyer to be registered as a legal consultant, this lawyer must have at least two years of legal work experience, and that for a non-Omani lawyer to be registered as a legal consultant, this lawyer must have at least five years of legal work experience. The term used for legal work experience in the context of legal consultancy work is not the same term used for advocacy equivalent works provided for in article 12, so it is not clear what kind of legal experience is required. However, what this appears to suggest is that legal consultancy offices would not be able to hire any Omani person as a legal consultant if this person does not have at least two years of experience, and it also means that foreign lawyers can work in Oman in private practice only if they have at least five years of experience and only in legal consultancy offices.

Unlike advocates, there are no examination or continuous development requirements for legal consultants.

In regard to international law firms, the executive regulation stipulates that they can operate in Oman on their own or in partnership with legal consultancy offices (but not advocacy offices). This is only permitted for law firms that have been established for more than 15 years and have branches in at least three countries.

Both the law and the regulation have many other key changes that will affect the licensing of lawyers and law firms, and the impact that this will have on the industry will be unpredictable. If a local Omani law firm currently hires non-foreign lawyers (including Egyptian, Sudanese, and Indian lawyers), this law firm would have to decide whether to let go of these lawyers—if it chooses to remain as an advocacy office—or transform into a legal consultancy office and give up on its litigation business. International law firms operating in partnerships with Omani law firms might also have to reconsider their partnerships as the law now prohibits establishing a partnership with an advocacy office, and instead allows them to either operate independently or in collaboration with a legal consultancy office.

Both the law and its executive regulation have already entered into force. However, existing law firms generally have until October of this year to comply with it, and law firms established in partnerships with a non-Omani have until October of 2027 to remove the non-Omani partner.

You can read the law and its executive regulation in English in full on the links below:

A strange thing about this new Law of Special Economic Zones is that it does not define the terms “Special Economic Zone” and “Free Zone”. However, the key differences between them appear to be that a special economic zone is a more comprehensive project that may or may not include a free zone within it; that a special economic zone is directly managed by OPAZ, while a free zone is required to have a third-party operator; and that special economic zones can include real estate development projects where property may be sold to Omani and non-Omani persons, while standard free zones can’t.

The provisions regarding real estate development projects in special economic zones are a new addition not previously found in the System of the Special Economic Zone in Duqm. Outside this key change, the law appears to mostly attempt to consolidate the provisions that were uniquely provided through the System of the Special Economic Zone at Duqm into general provisions that can apply to any special economic zone to be created in the future.

It is worth noting that the provisions of the law remain conservative and the status they grant special economic zones is not comparable to the status of special free zones in neighbouring countries such as DIFC, ADGM, or QFC, that operate in a manner independent of the national legal system of the state and have their own regulators, substantive laws, and court system. In Oman, special economic zones created under the new Law of Special Economic Zones and Free Zones remain basic free zones that offer time-limited tax reliefs along with streamlined processes for obtaining government approvals.

The new Law of Special Economic Zones and Free Zones entered into force yesterday. You can read it in full in English on the link below:

Our extremely fast original search engine will remain the primary search engine associated with our search button, and those wishing to utilise the new advanced search options will be able to quickly access the new search form from the search side bar.

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Decree Risk used to cover risk incidents relating to liquidations, capital reduction, legal form transformation, and other risk incidents announced in the Official Gazette and daily newspapers. We are expanding the scope of Decree Risk by adding details on disclosures made by companies listed on the Muscat Stock Exchange. Our database populates new disclosures within minutes of their release on the MSX and lets users search the full content of the PDF file of the disclosure, which can be extremely useful for any person doing due diligence research on a company.

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The Government of the Sultanate of Oman is routinely criticised by the international community for discriminating between the treatment of Omani men and women as the law deprives Omani women of the ability to transmit nationality to their children if they marry to a foreigner. Unfortunately, the new law does not change this key principle for the transmission of Omani nationality only through the father, but it lowers the requirements for obtaining Omani nationality for all paths to nationality and creates a new quicker path for a foreign husband of an Omani woman to obtain Omani nationality.

Generally speaking, the Omani Nationality Law of 2025 retains the same structure and approach of the Omani Nationality Law of 2014 as it requires nationality to be granted by royal decree through an application made to the Ministry of Interior, and decisions made in this regard are not subject to review by any of the courts. The law also retains the same principle that dual nationality cannot be granted except as an exception by royal decree and does not provide any clarifications for the cases in which this exception would be granted.

The law retains the distinction between a holder of Omani nationality by origin and a person granted Omani nationality, which makes a difference in regard to cases in which Omani nationality can be revoked. Under the law of 2014, any person born to an Omani father is automatically deemed Omani by origin. The new Omani Nationality Law of 2025 makes the standard for being considered Omani by origin higher by giving it to third generation descendants of a nationalised Omani after these grandchildren reach the age of 50.

Other than the higher standard for who is considered an Omani by origin, the requirements for obtaining Omani nationality have been reduced as follows:

The meaning of continuous residence for all paths to nationality has also been loosened as the previous law considered being out of the country for more than 60 days in a year a violation of the continuous residence requirements. This period has now been extended to 90 days.

The law also has other provisions determining the treatment of foreign husbands and wives of Omanis who divorce their Omani partners after obtaining nationality, a new ground for revoking nationality from Omanis by origin for insulting the person of the Sultan, and other provisions.

You can read the new Omani Nationality Law in full in English on the link below:

Case Summary: Supreme Court (Civil Circuit) 293/2016 (Characteristics of Adhesion Contracts): In a dispute between a bank and a corporate client, the Supreme Court held that the standard terms and conditions of the contract signed between a bank and this corporate client do not fulfil the characteristics of an adhesion contract, and therefore these terms and conditions cannot be set aside on this ground.

Case Summary: Supreme Court (Civil Circuit) 64/2016 (Objection to Court Jurisdiction Over Dispute Subject to Arbitration Clause): In a contractual dispute over rent payments, the Supreme Court held that the Court of Appeal in Sohar cannot, at its own initiative, set aside the judgment of the Primary Court in Suwaiq on the basis that the court has no jurisdiction due to the existence of an arbitration clause in the contract if none of the parties to the dispute raised this as a defence.

The Ministry of Information: This is the entity responsible for disseminating information about the Sultanate of Oman and regulating media in the country.

The Ministry of Economy: This is the entity responsible for formulating the macro-economic policy of the state, approving the annual development budget of the government, and approving projects for the five-year plans of the government.

The new regulation completely overhauls the framework for controlling noise generated by business operations in public places (such as construction, mining, and airports), creates a classification for noise levels for daytime vs nighttime without reference to working days and holidays, introduces new duties on project owners to take noise measures and carry out noise modelling as part of environmental impact studies, and sets new administrative penalties of up to 500 rials for those who violate the regulation.

It is worth noting that this regulation repeals the old Regulation on Noise Control in the Public Environment of 1994, but does not repeal the Regulation on Noise Control in the Work Environment of 1994, which continues to remain in force.

The new Regulation for Noise Control in the Public Environment enters into force tomorrow. You can read it in full in English on the link below:

The new System of Signing Contracts and Financial Commitments of the State sets the formalities by which a government entity can sign a contract or any financial commitment with a foreign government, an international organisation, or a private natural or legal person in Oman or abroad. This new system simplifies the process of signing government contracts as it removes the requirements previously set by Royal Decree 48/76 to have any contract worth more than 500,000 Rial Omani signed by the Ministry of Finance in addition to the ministry responsible for the contract. The signature of the Ministry of Finance is now only required in regard to the signing of government bonds, government guarantees, and investment projects relating to the economic development of the state outside OIA investments.

The new system also codifies some existing practices that were not previously governed by any specific legal text, such as those relating to the issuance of government guarantees. Chapter Three of the system sets the general rules that government guarantees must comply with, imposes an explicit requirement to have such guarantees reviewed by the MJLA, and specifies that the Ministry of Finance has the authority to issue a decision governing the conditions of government guarantees.

Contractors signing contracts with proper government ministries subject to the provision of this system must ensure that the government entities they sign their contracts with comply with the provisions of this system as article 6 of the system stipulates that any contract that does not comply with the provisions of the system will not be enforceable against the government. Article 6 appears to put an unreasonable level of risk on contractors as it also stipulates that a contract will only be enforceable against the government if financial allocations are available for the project in question, which is an internal matter for the government that contractors would not have the ability to verify. However, confusingly enough, article 11 of the system stipulates that signing a government contract in accordance with the provisions of this system is deemed a confirmation that financial allocations are present.

This new system does not apply to government-owned companies, investments made by the OIA, contracts signed by military or security agencies or CBO, contracts signed by public establishments that are not financed or guaranteed by the state, or contracts signed directly by His Majesty or by his written authorisation.

The System of Signing Contracts and Financial Commitments of the State will enter into force after 30 days. You can read it in full in English on the link below: