How Oman can turn trust into industry

Oman can convert its reputation for reliability into a new industrial advantage by building what Dr Yousuf bin Hamed al Balushi calls an "assurance economy" centred on energy, food, minerals, medicine and computing. Dr Yousuf — founder and CEO of Smart Investment Gateway, economist, board adviser and business transformation mentor — argues that Vision 2040's mining target of 10% of GDP (from roughly 1.4% in 2020) will require Oman to become a regional node for verified supply chains, leveraging state entities such as Minerals Development Oman (MDO) and the Oman Investment Authority (OIA) alongside international finance and infrastructure projects.

"Trust is, and trust is the one input Oman holds in surplus," Dr Yousuf wrote, emphasising that the country’s long record of keeping commitments and existing market access position it to capture premiums for verified origin, quality and continuity.

Global trends have shifted the premium from lowest cost to verified continuity: Global Trade Alert logged 4,088 harmful trade measures in 2025 alone, and the International Energy Agency finds top refining countries account for about 86% of processing capacity in critical-mineral markets. Dr Yousuf points to concrete initiatives and numbers to show how Oman can act. MDO, backed by the OIA, operates multiple mining and exploration interests, and its flagship Mazoon Copper Project is designed to produce approximately 115,000 tonnes of copper concentrate annually. Still, Omani geology alone cannot deliver the jump from 1.4% to 10% of GDP; the path runs through imported ore, particularly from East Africa.

Dr Yousuf highlights the US-led Lobito corridor as a precedent: the Development Finance Corporation and the Development Bank of Southern Africa closed a $753 million financing package in June to rehabilitate more than 1,300 km of Angolan railway. He argues Oman could create an eastern corridor carrying East African ore a few days' sail to Duqm or Salalah for separation and magnet-making before onward shipment, combining mineral and exploration rights secured by MDO and OIA, infrastructure finance, and a refining node where neutrality is accepted by both producers and buyers.

Policy levers and concrete measures

• Energy: Oman plans more than 30 GW of renewable capacity and aims for renewables to supply about 30% of electricity by 2030, positioning cheap power as the cost line for electrolysis, separation and fermentation industries.
• Industrial incentives: In June, Oman capped power for food-security linked firms at 12 baizas per kilowatt-hour, a principle Dr Yousuf says could be extended to other assurance industries.
• Trade and certification: When Oman and Saudi Arabia recognised each other's certificates of origin, Omani industrial exports to Saudi Arabia rose 39% to RO 733 million in the first seven months of 2025 — evidence that mutual recognition boosts trade.
• Research and capacity: Dr Yousuf calls for lifting research spending (Oman's 0.37% of GDP versus Saudi Arabia's 0.56%) and funding accredited laboratories, metrology and mutual-recognition agreements on the same basis as core infrastructure.

Outlook: Dr Yousuf argues that assurance infrastructure — accredited labs, digital product passports, automated inspection and certification regimes powered by machine learning — is the decisive investment for Oman. "Machine learning collapses the cost," he writes, allowing a country of roughly five million people to run certification regimes that once required far larger bureaucracies. If policymakers prioritise assurance capacity, Oman could capture high-margin security markets without needing scale: the jobs and inward investment would follow chemists, metrologists, regulatory specialists and engineers rather than the other way round.