Dubai: More than 300,000 workers lost their jobs in the private sector over the past two years in Oman, largely because of the COVID-19 pandemic, local media reported.
The vast majority of those who lost their jobs, around 292,500 people, were expats, the Minister of Economy revealed during an interview with Oman TV.
“You cannot measure the performance of the private sector for the years 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic conditions, low demand for jobs and other reasons that led to the exit of about 300,000 workers, including 7,500 are Omanis,” Al Saqri added.
Although more than 58,000 expats left Oman permanently in 2021, the Sultanate’s expat population has been on the rise since October 2021, according to figures available from the National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI).
The NCSI population clock shows that on October 1, 2021, there were 1,634,357 expats in Oman, having declined from 1.64 million in September and 1.68 million in August of last year.
Since last October, the nation’s expatriate population has been steadily rising. It rose from 1.63 million in October to 1,657,055 in November of 2021 and then climbed to 1,688,461 in December last year.
At the start of the New Year, Oman’s expat population figures crossed the 1.7 million mark to reach 1,729,965, before rising to 1,753,264 on February 1.
