Oman’s ten-year investor visa asks for a labour permit and a sponsor

Oman grants foreign investors residence for up to ten years. The instrument that sets it up, Royal Oman Police Decision 234/2021, contains no investment threshold: the provision requires a certificate from an unnamed authority, and every monetary amount in the text is a fee. The police force’s own visa portal, read on 22 September 2026, does not supply the missing number either.

The instrument, and the amounts in it

Decision 234/2021 amends the Executive Regulation of the Foreigners’ Residence Law, itself made under Royal Decree 16/95 by Decision 63/96. It was issued on 21 October 2021, signed by the Inspector General of Police and Customs, published in Official Gazette issue 1413 of 24 October 2021, and takes effect the day after publication.

Its investor provision replaces item (9) of article 10. An investor visa is granted to a foreigner who wishes to invest their money in the country, on the basis of a certificate issued by the competent authority attesting to that, and must be used within one year of issue. The text names no authority, states no amount, and points to no other instrument that states one. A later paragraph uses a different Arabic term for the authority that may convert visas under the article into any type carrying residence, subject to eligibility, to that authority’s own rules, and to payment.

The monetary amounts in the decision are all prices. The entry visa costs 500 Omani Rial for the ten-year investor visa and 300 for the five-year one. Residence renewal costs 500 every three years and 300 every three years respectively. A visa for joining an investor costs 100 or 50, with renewal at the same rates every three years. The decision states no exchange rate, and this article supplies no conversion.

The schedule lists renewal fees every three years; the portal says residence can be renewed for a similar period to the original visa. Their relationship is unexplained.

What the granting authority says is required

The Royal Oman Police run the e-visa portal, which publishes a catalogue of visa types and a conditions page for each. Its catalogue contains exactly one investor entry, type 15: granted to a foreigner wishing to invest in the country, based on a certificate issued by the competent authority, valid for five or ten years and renewable for similar periods.

Behind that entry sit seven sub-types — one year, two years, a one-year and a two-year variant for an investor working with a local sponsor, the first of them in an economic free zone, five years, ten years, and a property owner’s visa. The summary above them says five or ten years. This article does not reconcile the two.

Each sub-type has a conditions page, and for the six investor variants the document list is identical and has four items: a digital photograph, a copy of the passport, the original labour permit bearing an investor stamp, issued by what the portal calls the Ministry of Manpower, and, for some nationalities, a medical fitness certificate endorsed by the Ministry of Health. There is no bank statement, no evidence of capital, no business plan and no net-worth figure.

Two further conditions run across all six. The applicant must be at least 21, and must be sponsored by an approved Omani sponsor. The four one-year and two-year variants also require the applicant to be an investor in an Omani company; the two described as working with a local sponsor charge no police fee, because payment is made at the Ministry of Manpower, and renew every two years.

The Ministry of Labour lists no service under an investor’s name. Its commercial work permit service for establishments is described as letting employers apply for work permits for the workforce and for investors, through the same counter. That page states no capital condition either.

The money condition on the transit page

A finding built on an absence is only worth printing if the same search could have seen the thing it did not find. The same portal, the same three steps: the conditions for an airport transit visa include the requirement to have enough money to cover expenses and an onward ticket.

The search detects that sentence. It does not establish that the search would detect every way of stating an investment threshold, or that the portal publishes every requirement, and the pages read here do not settle whether an applicant’s finances are examined before the certificate or the stamp is issued.

Transferring ownership ends the property-linked residence

Article 3 of the decision replaces the last paragraph of article 26. The exemption from the age condition for residence joining an investor, and residence joining an owner, operates under rules set by the Director General. Then the sentence that matters to anyone buying into a resort: the residence of a foreigner who owns a unit in an integrated tourism complex ends on disposal of that unit by any legal act transferring ownership, and the residence of the spouse, the children and the accompanying relatives ends with it.

The portal shows what that route is in practice. The property owner’s visa needs no sponsor, runs two years at a time, costs 50 Rial, and requires the title deed, the floor plan, and a letter from the complex’s developer confirming the applicant owns an already-built unit, stamped by the Ministry of Tourism.

What this article does not establish

What the investment has to be. The sources read here establish neither an amount nor the conditions on which an investor stamp is added to a labour permit. Oman’s business registration portal is behind a login, which this publication did not use.

Which body the decision means by “the competent authority”, whether the two Arabic terms it uses for that idea denote the same body, and whether a stamped labour permit is the certificate article 10 refers to. Nothing read here says so.

The wording as it appears in the Official Gazette. The Arabic text was read on Qanoon.om, which states that it is not an official source of law and advises checking the Omani Official Gazette; the gazette issue and date above make that check possible. An English translation of this decision exists on a sister site but sits behind a subscription, so the English renderings here are this publication’s own from the Arabic.