Oman Country Profile: Productivity growth, diversification, and structural change in the Arab States

This country snapshot provides a historical overview of Oman's labor productivity trends compared with other GCC economies and the global economy.1 In addition to highlighting the position of Oman relative to its peers in the GCC and global frontiers in terms of labour productivity, this snapshot documents the trends in labour productivity and multifactor productivity growth and the relative contributions of labour productivity and employment growth to aggregate output growth. The structure of an economy plays a critical role in determining a country’s productivity trends, both due to technological change and productivity growth within industries, and the potential for enhancing productivity by shifting resources to more productive uses. Therefore, this country profile also examines the evolution of the structure of Oman’s economy, in terms of industry composition of employment and output compared to the GCC average. Finally, a few recommendations for future productivity improvement in the country are derived based on the existing evidence on long-term productivity trends and current economic circumstances.