The sultanate also plans to issue RO600mn of local bonds, H E Zadjali said, without providing a timeline for the sales. Oman has reserves enough to cover four months of imports, he added.
The CBO recently launched a new government development bond (GDB) issue worth RO100mn with a maturity period of five years.
The sultanate’s 2016 state budget estimates a deficit of RO3.3bn, compared to an actual deficit of RO4.5bn for the year 2015.
Based on an average oil price of US$45 per barrel and average production of 990,000 barrels per day, Oman’s total budgeted revenues for 2016 are at RO8.6bn, which is 25.8 per cent lower than 2015 budgeted figures and down nearly four per cent from the actuals.
With oil languishing below US$35 a barrel and bank liquidity drying up, Gulf borrowers are poised to venture away from the relative privacy of loan deals and into the bond market, Bloomberg reported on Monday.
Governments in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) will be pushed to sell about US$35bn of bonds this year to bridge budget deficits, according to estimates from Emirates NBD, Dubai’s biggest bank.