Cleaning and manpower supply in Oman — who is actually allowed to do this

General building cleaning and labour recruitment are both on Oman's foreign-investment negative list. They are reserved to Omani investors, at zero foreign ownership, and have been since December 2020. Separately, the business most people mean by manpower supply — sponsoring workers on your own commercial registration and hiring them out to other companies — is not a licensed activity in Oman under any instrument we could find.

Both activities are reserved to Omani investors

Ministerial Decision 209/2020, issued on 8 December 2020 by the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion, sets the list of activities in which foreign investment is prohibited and which are reserved to the Omani investor. Three numbered items on that list decide this question, and three more catch the laundry trades a cleaning company usually wants to add.

Practically: a foreigner cannot hold any percentage of a company registered for ISIC 812100 or 781001. The 100% foreign ownership Oman advertises under the Foreign Capital Investment Law does not reach these activities, and neither does a minority shareholding. The only laundry work open to foreign investment is what is carried out inside a tourism establishment.

"Manpower supply" is not a licensed activity in Oman

This is the finding that surprises people most. There is no Omani licence called manpower supply, labour supply, or staff outsourcing. We looked for one in the Labour Law, in the ministerial decisions issued under it, and in the negative list. It is not there.

What exists instead are two much narrower things, and neither is the business people have in mind.

1. Licensed recruitment of non-Omani manpower — bringing workers into Oman for an employer, who then sponsors them. This is a real licence, and it is reserved to Omanis.
2. Temporary transfer of workers you already sponsor to another private-sector establishment, under Ministerial Decision 730/2024, capped at six months a year and requiring the Ministry's authorisation.

The model in between — you register a company, sponsor two hundred workers on your own commercial registration, and place them with client companies who pay you a margin — has no licensing regime. It is not that it is difficult to license. There is nothing to apply for.

Licensed recruitment: the regime that does exist

Article 31 of the Labour Law: it is prohibited to practise the activity of recruiting non-Omani manpower except after obtaining a licence from the Ministry, and it is prohibited to charge any amounts to the workers being recruited. The same article requires a ministerial decision to set the conditions for the licence and for the contract between the licence holder and employers.

That decision is Ministerial Decision 1/2011, the regulation for practising the activity of recruiting non-Omani manpower, published in Official Gazette 927 on 15 January 2011 and amended by Ministerial Decision 420/2012. It is still in force. When Ministerial Decision 574/2025 issued the new domestic workers regulation, its Article 3 repealed Ministerial Decision 189/2004 and only two annexed forms of MD 1/2011 — the rest of it stands.

• The applicant must be an Omani national
• A diploma or equivalent, or at least 10 years of work experience with literacy
• Full legal capacity and good conduct
• The applicant must operate through an establishment, work full-time, directly manage it, and hold no other commercial activity, employment or trade
• Fee for a new licence: OMR 500
• Processing time: 90 days

MD 420/2012 added the operational teeth. Renewal must be applied for at least 30 days before expiry, with a decision inside 30 days. And there is a refund obligation: if within 180 days of the worker starting, the occupation does not match the recruitment authorisation, or the worker refuses to work without lawful cause, or the worker has a disability or an infectious, chronic or mental illness preventing the agreed work, the office must refund the employer — with a 14-day return window where the occupation is wrong.

The bank guarantee nobody can produce

Every English-language guide to opening a recruitment office in Oman gives a bank guarantee figure. No Omani government source publishes one. The Ministry of Labour's own service description on gov.om lists nationality, qualification, capacity, conduct, full-time operation, the OMR 500 fee and the 90-day processing time — and no guarantee, no minimum capital and no licence duration. The Ministry's FAQ describes the safeguards on recruitment offices in detail and mentions no guarantee either. MD 420/2012, which amends the licensing conditions themselves, contains no monetary figures at all.

The text of MD 1/2011 is published only as a scanned image with no machine-readable text, which is very likely why the figure has never been checked by anyone repeating it. The one amount the Ministry's FAQ does give is OMR 36, payable with each temporary licence application.

Temporary transfer: the one lawful way to place your workers elsewhere

Ministerial Decision 730/2024 regulates the temporary transfer of non-Omani manpower between private-sector establishments, effective 15 December 2024. It is the only published route by which one company's sponsored workers may lawfully work for another.

• The occupation must not be Omanised, and the new role must fall in the same occupational category
• The worker must consent
• The worker must have at least 6 months of service with the original establishment
• The work permit must be active with at least 6 months of validity remaining
• The transfer may not exceed 6 months in a year
• Neither establishment may have more than 50% of its registered workforce out on, or in on, transfer
• Both must meet their Omanisation ratios, owe the Ministry nothing, and not be under service suspension

During the transfer the receiving establishment pays not less than the original wage with identical benefits, through the Wage Protection System, and bears all of the worker's rights and obligations. It must notify the original employer immediately if the worker leaves.

Two things to notice. No fee is stated in the published text. And the decision contains no mention of manpower supply or labour contracting companies at all — it regulates transfers between ordinary employers, which is further evidence that a labour-supply industry is simply not contemplated in Omani law.

Cleaning: three licences, and none replaces another

Assuming you are Omani and can hold the activity, a cleaning company sits under three separate authorities. People routinely complete one and assume they are trading lawfully.

1. Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion — commercial registration with the activity ISIC 812100, subject to the MD 209/2020 reservation.
2. The municipality — an activity practising licence. Muscat Municipality publishes an ISIC-4 activity lookup showing, per activity, whether the licence is for an individual or an establishment, whether an inspection is required before approval, and the annual activity fee.
3. Ministry of Labour — work permits for the workforce, the Omanisation ratio, and the profession restrictions below.

One administrative change worth knowing: since 4 April 2023 commercial signage approval moved out of the municipalities sector and into the Invest Easy portal, so the shopfront sign is now handled alongside commercial licensing rather than separately at the municipality.

We could not extract the per-activity municipal fee for cleaning. Muscat Municipality's schedule is a live query form rather than a published table, so the figure has to be looked up against your specific activity code — and the municipalities set their own fees. Anyone quoting you one flat municipal fee for a cleaning company across all of Oman is guessing.

Hiring the cleaners: the profession freeze

Ministerial Decision 452/2024 suspended permits to recruit non-Omani manpower in 13 professions for six months from 1 September 2024. Both of the trades this guide covers are on the schedule.

• Building cleaning worker (عامل تنظيف / مباني عامة) and general construction (بناء / عام)
• Cargo loading and unloading, brick masonry, reinforcement welding
• Women's and men's tailoring, and men's hairdressing
• Electrical installation work, residential electrical work, building painting
• Food service and cooking

Article 2 leaves two doors open: renewals, and transfer of services from inside Oman. So the freeze restricts new arrivals rather than the existing pool. We could not establish whether it was extended past March 2025. It was a six-month measure by its own terms, and whether it was re-issued for 2025 or 2026 is not something we could confirm. It is the first thing to check before you budget for overseas recruitment.

What the work permits cost

Ministerial Decision 602/2025 issued the regulation on work licences and work practice licences and repealed Ministerial Decision 340/2016, which had set the previous fees. Fees are per worker, by profession category.

A work licence runs for 24 months and is not renewable; a work practice licence runs up to 24 months and is renewable. Article 10 sets a late fee of OMR 10 a month, capped at OMR 500 per worker. Article 11 adds OMR 15 for a natural person and OMR 20 for a legal person who fails to regularise a worker's status.

Penalties

On the ownership question, the operative provision is Article 33 of Royal Decree 50/2019, the Foreign Capital Investment Law. It fines any foreigner who carries on an investment activity in breach of the law not less than OMR 20,000 and not more than OMR 150,000, and imposes the same penalty on any Omani who participates with a foreigner in an investment project in breach of the law. Article 33 carries no imprisonment.

Be precise about what that article says, because it is often described as an anti-fronting clause. The Arabic is كل عماني يشترك مع أجنبي — any Omani who participates with a foreigner. That is broader than a nominee arrangement, and it is not drafted as a bespoke fronting offence. The practical effect is the same: the Omani name on the licence carries the same exposure as the foreign money behind it. Nearby, Article 34 fines obstruction of officials OMR 1,000 to 5,000, and Article 35 punishes disclosure of confidential information with six months to three years and a fine of OMR 5,000 to 50,000.

On the labour side, Royal Decree 53/2023. Article 143(1), for letting your worker work for others: 10 days to one month and OMR 1,000 to 2,000. Article 143(3), for recruiting without a licence: the same imprisonment and fine, or one of the two, plus cancellation or suspension of the licence for at least a year. Article 144, for an Omanisation shortfall: OMR 500 to 1,000 for every Omani post that should have been filled.

What no Omani source publishes

• No bank guarantee amount for a recruitment office. None, on any government page, in any instrument we could read.
• No minimum capital for a recruitment office or for a cleaning company.
• No licence duration for a recruitment licence on the official service page.
• No named activity for labour supply. ISIC 7810, recruitment and placement, is on the negative list. We could find no entry at all for ISIC 7820 or 7830 — temporary employment agencies and other human resources provision — in the negative list or in any published activity register. Whether they exist as issuable Omani activities is genuinely unresolved, because the Ministry of Commerce does not publish a searchable public activity list.
• No sector Omanisation percentage for cleaning or manpower. The only published sectoral figures we found are the construction and brick-factory ratios of 10% and 12% in Ministerial Decision 127/2020.
• No municipal fee table for cleaning outside the live Muscat Municipality lookup, and no national figure at all.
• No confirmation of the status of MD 452/2024 after March 2025.

If you are Omani and building this business

The sequence is: commercial registration in the reserved activity, then the municipal activity licence, then — if you intend to recruit from abroad rather than hire locally — a separate Ministry of Labour recruitment licence at OMR 500 with a 90-day wait, which requires you personally to run the office full-time and to hold no other trade. Then the work permits, priced under MD 602/2025 and constrained by whatever the current position is on the profession freeze.

If you are not Omani, the honest answer is that this sector is not open to you, and structuring around it through an Omani name puts an OMR 20,000 to 150,000 exposure on both of you. Our office in Al Ghubra files these registrations and can tell you at the counter which of the figures above the system is actually applying today — which, given how many of them are in transition, is worth checking before you commit.