In investment, the largest number is not always the most revealing. Sometimes a smaller figure tells you more about what is happening beneath the surface.
When Oman’s National Centre for Statistics and Information published preliminary Q1 data in July, one number inevitably attracted most of the attention. Foreign direct investment rose 8.7 per cent year on year to $83.7 billion (Dh307.3 billion) by the end of the first quarter of 2026. This is evidence that international investors continue to see opportunity in Oman, and it is worth celebrating.
However, I found myself equally interested in a figure that received less airtime. The combined capital of investment and real estate funds regulated in Oman nearly doubled in 2025 to about $3.1 billion. Within that total, investment fund capital rose by more than 125 per cent in a single year.
Rising FDI shows that the world continues to believe in Oman’s prospects. The growth of investment funds suggests that the country is simultaneously laying firmer foundations for capital to be pooled and invested through its own financial system.
Foreign investment is essential to any open and globally integrating economy. It brings capital, technology, expertise and connections to international markets. It is also a vote of confidence in a country’s stability and credibility. However, a resilient economy needs more than the ability to attract money from abroad. It also needs institutions at home that can mobilise savings, allocate capital professionally and direct it towards businesses and projects with the potential to grow. Oman’s latest figures suggest that this financial infrastructure is becoming stronger.
The numbers do not necessarily mean that every rial invested originated in Oman. They show that more capital is being pooled and managed through institutions based and regulated in the country, giving it another route through which to finance its ambitions. This may be less headline-grabbing than a major foreign investment announcement, but it is no less important.
International capital will always respond to forces beyond any country’s control. Interest rates change, political tensions alter perceptions of risk, investors reconsider their priorities, and money flows towards the markets considered safest at the time. Cultivating a stronger investment base at home gives an economy another source of financing through different economic cycles.
Domestic institutions also bring a different vantage point. Their proximity gives them a closer understanding of local businesses and economic priorities, and often a willingness to commit early, providing an anchor that opens the way to international capital.
None of this makes local capital inherently better. Proximity does not guarantee better judgement, and capital raised within the country still needs strong governance and sound investment decisions. Neither is the argument that one form of capital should replace another. My point is that an economy is stronger when it can finance growth through more than one channel.
Foreign capital follows confidence. Local capital helps create it. Oman shows how the two can work together.
In July, Future Fund Oman announced 105 projects and investments worth $1.74 billion. Of that, roughly $585 million came from its own capital and around $458 million from local investors, directed into renewable energy, manufacturing, tourism, healthcare, technology, and food production.
At the $1.6 billion United Solar polysilicon plant in Sohar, local and international capital worked in tandem. Future Fund Oman invested approximately $260 million, making the Oman Investment Authority, through the fund, the project’s largest shareholder. The International Finance Corporation and its partners then arranged and mobilised more than 30 per cent of the total capital raised, including a final $50 million equity investment that completed the financing. The project is expected to create close to 3,000 jobs.
Local capital did not crowd out or replace foreign capital. It gave international institutions reason to follow.
Oman is part of a wider regional pattern. Confidence in the GCC runs high, with a recent survey by Consulum and HarrisX of more than 2,000 investors across the US, UK, Germany, France and China finding that 82 per cent are optimistic about the region’s economic future. We hear a lot about the Gulf’s success in attracting the world’s capital, but less noticed are the institutions being developed locally to mobilise capital towards regional businesses and opportunities. It is this financial infrastructure that will help decide how much of the Gulf’s transformation the region can finance on its own terms.
None of this is an argument for turning inward. The Gulf’s openness to global capital and partnership has been a foundation of its economic success, and Oman has benefited enormously from it – but openness and dependence are not synonymous. An economy that relies too heavily on external financing stays vulnerable to decisions made in distant markets. An economy that turns inward, on the other hand, limits access to capital and global opportunity.
The stronger position combines the two whereby a country is open to international capital and anchored by institutions that can mobilise investment at home. Yes, the world is investing in Oman’s future. But so too are the nation builders constructing Oman’s future from within.
