What Omani government transactions actually cost — one sheet, every figure sourced

This page collects every government fee we have verified across the site into one sheet, grouped by what you are trying to do rather than by which ministry collects it. Nothing here is new research: each figure has already been published, sourced and dated in a guide, and each line links back to it.

Treat this as a summary sheet rather than a source. Fees change, and when they do it is usually a ministerial decision that changes them rather than an announcement anybody sees. Every figure below links to the guide that carries the instrument, the date and the caveats, and the figures verified date at the top of this page is the date the whole sheet was last checked line by line.

Starting a business

The largest single change in this list is the Ministry of Finance fee reform, which cut licence fees across the board. The size of the cut is the story: an engineering office licence went from a band topping out at OMR 1,000 to a flat OMR 50, and a commercial registration in a special economic zone went from OMR 1,000 to OMR 30–40.

Alongside the licence itself, these are the charges that fall in the first weeks. The worked example in our setup cost guide puts the verifiable government fees for a small foreign-owned LLC with two expatriate employees at about OMR 710 in the first year — and that excludes trade name reservation, the CR registration itself, Chamber membership, rent, the bank minimum balance and any agent's fee, all of which are real costs we could not put a sourced figure against.

Keeping it running

Two things in that table deserve saying rather than leaving in a cell. The gov.om renewal page gives OMR 1 and, in the same breath, says the amount varies according to the legal form of the company; both statements are on the official page in English and Arabic and we are not going to guess which is doing the work. And Decision 1/2018 sets the municipal charge as an annual fee, not a transaction fee — no separate issue fee or renewal fee is published anywhere, so renewing means paying the annual activity fee again. Renewal is not permitted earlier than three months before expiry, and the licence expires with your tenancy contract. Chamber membership renews separately, on the Chamber's own portal, at these rates.

Work permits and labour fees

Closing it

Closing properly is cheap. The whole published chain comes to OMR 65 across three bodies, and two of the bodies that have to sign off charge nothing at all. The expensive option is walking away and leaving the register live.

Visas and residency

Documents and personal transactions

Driving, vehicles and the mulkiya

Sector licences

Muscat's annual activity fee is set by Muscat Municipality Decision 1/2018, and it is driven by your ISIC activity code rather than by the size of your premises. The spread inside a single sector is wide enough to change a business plan: a coffee shop is OMR 125 a year and a shisha café is OMR 5,000. One caveat on the source document — its numerals extract cleanly but the Arabic activity labels come out corrupted, so check the exact line for your activity against the printed Gazette.

Clinics and pharmacies — per three-year licence, MD 71/2024

Tourism, transport and training

Penalties and late fees

These are the numbers people are actually caught by, and they are scattered across a dozen guides. Two notes before the table. Municipal late fees compound — 10% of the outstanding fee for the first month, doubling each month the default continues, capped at the amount of the original fee — and Muscat Municipality's own renewal guides describe the same fine differently, as half the fees, so ask which is being applied to you. And the labour fines under Ministerial Decision 602/2025 are per worker, each with its own OMR 500 ceiling, so a small workforce can carry several at once.

What a fee includes, and what it does not

The Muscat annual activity fee includes a commercial signboard of up to 5 m². That is not a generous reading — it is the wording of the column header in Decision 1/2018. The Municipality's 2019 Services Guide nonetheless prices an illuminated facade sign at OMR 15 up to 3 m² and OMR 1 for each square metre above that, and attributes those fees to Local Order 1/2003, which Article 5 of Decision 1/2018 expressly repealed. No annex of Decision 1/2018 sets a signboard tariff or a per-square-metre rate at all. Take both documents to the licensing counter and get the answer on the receipt.

The OMR 30 medical fitness fee is described two ways by two official sources. The Ministry of Health's announcement of the change effective 1 November 2022 frames OMR 30 as the form fee, obtained from a Sanad office, with the private centre's examination fee and the Ministry's own results-approval fee both cancelled — the examination free at the point of use. gov.om and the Ministry's service page present OMR 30 and OMR 40 as the service fee, with no mention of a free examination. Both are official, nothing reconciles them, and the form is valid for 30 days from issue, so do not obtain it early.

Where Oman publishes no fee at all

This is the most original part of the page and the hardest thing to find anywhere else. Each of these is a fee, deadline or schedule a reasonable person would expect to exist, and which no Omani government source publishes. If someone quotes you a number for one of them, the useful question is where it comes from — and the honest answer is usually one consultancy page copying another.

• The Muscat Municipality health card. The requirement to hold one is in law, but no fee, validity period, test list or training syllabus appears in Decision 1/2018, on the e-services portal or in the FAQ. Duqm publishes OMR 10 and Madayn publishes zero, which tells you there is no national card and no single price.
• The CR renewal deadline. No published deadline, no grace period and no late-renewal fine — the only traceable penalty is the Article 18 band of OMR 100 to OMR 1,000 for failing to file within the statutory period.
• The PACDA fee schedule. The Civil Defence and Ambulance Authority lists twelve licence and certificate types and publishes no fee, no processing time and no list of which businesses need which.
• A signboard larger than 5 m². No annex of Decision 1/2018 sets a signboard tariff, and the guide that does price signs relies on a repealed local order.
• Renewal of a translation office licence. OMR 50 to open one, nothing published for renewal, and no implementing regulation to anchor either figure.
• A penalty for not holding a tax card. The Tax Authority publishes none; the OMR 200 to OMR 5,000 that circulates comes from a single press report.
• First registration of a new vehicle, and the fee to extend a mulkiya beyond one year. Neither is published — first registration is a counter transaction and is not among the ROP's e-services.
• What puts you in a Chamber of Commerce grade. The fee tables are published; the thresholds behind them are not.

Our office is a Sanad centre in Al Ghubra and we pay a good many of these fees across the counter in a normal week. If a figure here does not match what you were charged, tell us: we will check it against the instrument and re-date the sheet, which is what the verification line at the top is for. And keep the receipt — the fee and the administrative charge are separate lines on it, and that is how you tell a government fee from an agent's margin.