A power of attorney in Oman costs OMR 5 per principal and is executed before the notary public. That figure comes from a published decision, not from an agency's price list. What catches people out is not the price — it is that a power of attorney to sell property, a vehicle or a commercial register expires after one year, while a general one runs for five.
What it costs and how long it lasts
The fee schedule is Supreme Judicial Council Decision 234/2022, dated 15 December 2022, published in Official Gazette No. 1473 of 25 December 2022 and in force the day after publication. It repealed the older Ministerial Decision 175/2016. It sets both the fee and, unusually, the maximum validity in the same table.
| Power of attorney | Fee | Maximum validity |
|---|---|---|
| General, all types | OMR 5 per principal | 5 years |
| Sale or transfer of property, a vehicle or a commercial register | OMR 5 per principal | 1 year |
| Inheritance matters | OMR 1 per principal | 5 years |
| Pension fund matters | OMR 1 per principal | 5 years |
Read the fee as per principal, not per document. If three siblings jointly own a plot and grant one power of attorney to the same agent to sell it, that is three principals on one instrument and the fee is OMR 15, not OMR 5. The same logic applies to a married couple selling a jointly held property. The decision also prices general contracts and authentication at OMR 20, and a certificate from the records or a certified duplicate at OMR 5 each. Beneficiaries of social security are exempt.
A general power of attorney gives you five years. The moment the instrument is for selling or transferring property, a vehicle or a commercial register, the maximum drops to one year.
That is the exact category most people grant a power of attorney for, and the exact category where a deal can take longer than expected. If you grant one in September and the sale completes the following November, the instrument has expired and the Real Estate Registry will not act on it.
For dating older guidance: the repealed MD 175/2016 priced powers of attorney at OMR 5, commercial property or business sale, gift and mortgage at OMR 30, authentication of a signature on a commercial contract at OMR 25, and a debt acknowledgment at 1% of the debt bounded between OMR 5 and OMR 20. Separately, the Supreme Judicial Council announced a package of fee changes in March 2025 — 14 fees reduced, five abolished, six new — under which the notary document authentication fee and the notary travel fee for patients, prisoners, the elderly, the disabled and widows were abolished. We could not locate the decision number behind that announcement, so we are reporting it as announced rather than as a citation.
Who actually notarises — the judiciary, not the Ministry
Almost every guide tells you the notary public sits at the Ministry of Justice and Legal Affairs. On the evidence available today that is wrong, or at best half true. Every operational instrument since 2022 issues from the Supreme Judicial Council and the Council for Administrative Affairs of the Judiciary.
- The notary fee schedule is SJC Decision 234/2022, signed by the Deputy Chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council.
- The rules on when documents must be witnessed are SJC Decision 196/2022.
- Notary office locations are set by SJC decision — Decision 38/2023 created the office at the Invest in Oman Lounge in Seeb, and Decision 267/2025 of 12 June 2025 abolished the Bousher office and fixed the seat of the Muscat office.
- The notary system runs at notary.caaj.gov.om, on the judiciary's administrative-affairs domain, and the Notary Public Department publishes its services manual under Supreme Judicial Council branding.
The tension is real and worth stating rather than smoothing over. The governing statute is the Notaries Public Law, Royal Decree 40/2003, issued 13 May 2003 and published in Official Gazette No. 743 of 17 May 2003. It was amended by Royal Decree 51/2022, issued 28 June 2022, which rewrote Articles 1 to 6, 10, 12 and 15, added an Article 14 bis, and — the change that matters here — replaced references to the Deputy Chairman of the Council with references to the Minister throughout.
On the text of the amended law, competence sits with the Minister. On every fee, office and procedural decision actually published since, competence sits with the Supreme Judicial Council.
For practical purposes — where you go, what you pay, which portal you use — the answer is the judiciary. We are not going to pretend the statutory wording says that, because it does not.
Omani law does not list types of power of attorney
You will read that Oman recognises three types of power of attorney, or four, or six. The Notaries Public Law does not enumerate types at all. It sets out how an instrument is authenticated, not what flavours of instrument exist.
The taxonomy comes from two administrative places instead. The first is the fee schedule above, which recognises four categories for pricing purposes. The second is the Notary Public Department's own service catalogue, which offers 20 distinct power-of-attorney categories within 61 services overall — the rest being acknowledgments and pledges, personal status matters, wills and endowments, mortgage, gift and sale instruments, investor services, approvals and applications.
- Financial and legal — general advocacy and litigation, retirement funds, social benefits, banking, inheritance.
- Property — purchase, sale, management, usufruct contracts.
- Vehicles — purchase, sale, driving authorisation, comprehensive vehicle management.
- Labour and logistics — worker clearance procedures, port transfers.
- Personal status — marriage authorisation for a guardian or a fiancé or fiancée, divorce, finalising transactions for a minor.
This matters at the counter. You are not choosing between a general and a special power of attorney in the abstract — you are picking a named category from a list, and the category determines the fee, the validity period and whether witnesses are required. Turning up and asking for a general power of attorney when what you need is the vehicle-sale category wastes the visit.
Who has to turn up
The grantor — the first party — must attend the notary department in person. Identification is by national ID card, and the department authenticates with a one-time password sent to a phone number registered with the Royal Oman Police. If your ROP-registered number is an old one you no longer use, fix that before you go; it is the most common reason a visit fails.
- The grantor attends in person with a valid national ID card. Where the other party is involved, their ID is needed too.
- The department verifies identity and legal capacity, and sends a one-time password to the phone number registered with the Royal Oman Police.
- Supporting documents are produced where the category requires them — a judicial decree for inheritance matters, a court decision where a minor is involved, and the original power of attorney where the authority is being delegated onward.
- Witnesses attend where the category requires witnessing.
- The instrument is read aloud, signed, and the fee is paid per principal.
The procedural obligations sit in the law itself. Article 7 requires the instrument to be read aloud to the parties. Article 9 requires the notary to verify identity from official identity documents and to satisfy himself as to capacity. Article 17 makes Arabic mandatory and requires certified translation of anything not in Arabic, with Article 10 allowing sworn translators or experts where there is a language barrier. Article 12 governs the signing of multi-page instruments. Article 16 bars the notary from acting outside the office except where the parties request it in writing. Article 18 is the power under which the fee schedule is made, and Article 19 exempts transactions of official government entities from fees.
When you need two witnesses
Witnessing is not universal, and the rule is precise. Supreme Judicial Council Decision 196/2022, effective 13 November 2022 and amended by Decision 65/2025 of 10 February 2025, lists the cases where witnessing is mandatory.
- Powers of attorney for the sale, purchase, gift or transfer of real estate.
- Powers of attorney for bank withdrawal or collection.
- All acknowledgments and undertakings, of every kind.
- Contracts transferring ownership — sale and gift — that do not fall within another authority's jurisdiction.
Where witnessing applies, Article 2 requires two witnesses, who must be of sound mind, of legal age, and understanding the content of the instrument. The decision sets no nationality condition, no literacy test beyond comprehension of the document, and states no rule about the witnesses' relationship to the parties.
The two categories that catch foreigners are the property power of attorney and the banking power of attorney. Both require two witnesses, and neither requirement is obvious from the fee schedule or from the service name.
Bring two adults with their own identity documents who can follow what the document says. If they cannot follow the Arabic, the witnessing requirement is not satisfied by their presence alone.
A power of attorney to sell property
This changed on 18 May 2026, when the Real Estate Registry Law, Royal Decree 56/2026 came into force and replaced the registry statute under Royal Decree 2/98. Under the new law the title deed is the only accepted proof of ownership, and a disposition must be registered to have any effect beyond a personal obligation between the parties.
Two consequences for powers of attorney. First, the instrument must be specific and explicit as to the intended transaction — sale, mortgage, gift or partition. A general authority to manage your affairs will not carry a sale. Second, an agent may register the property in his own name only if the power of attorney expressly authorises that. If you are the grantor, read that sentence twice before you sign anything drafted by the buyer's side.
Much of the English-language material on Omani property powers of attorney cites Article 45 of Sultani Decree 2/98 for the rule that the instrument must name the specific transaction. That statute has been repealed by RD 56/2026.
The equivalent rule survives in the new law, so the practical advice is unchanged — but the citation is dead, and we could not confirm the replacement article number from a free primary source. If you need the article number for a pleading or a submission, take it from the Gazette text rather than from any summary, ours included.
The penalties moved sharply in the same reform. Real estate fraud was punishable by a fine of OMR 200; under RD 56/2026 it carries six months to three years' imprisonment plus a fine of OMR 1,000 to OMR 30,000.
The registry side has its own published prices, which are separate from the notary fee. These are set by Ministerial Decision 570/2025 of 19 January 2025, published in Official Gazette No. 1581 of 26 January 2025.
| Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning service | Fee |
|---|---|
| Registering a sale between third parties or distant relatives | 3% of the property value |
| Transferring registered property to a company you wholly own, or own 50% of | 1% of the property value |
| Registering a single inheritance | OMR 20 |
| Registering multiple inheritance | OMR 40 |
| Extracting a title deed, in Arabic or English | OMR 10 |
| Replacing a lost or damaged title deed | OMR 30 |
Granting one from abroad
Start by discarding the idea that Oman's Apostille membership is new. Oman acceded to the Hague Apostille Convention on 12 May 2011 and it entered into force for Oman on 30 January 2012. Oman was the 101st Contracting State and the first Gulf state to join. Anything written as though Oman joined recently, or has not joined, is out of date by well over a decade.
That leaves a genuine open question about which route Omani authorities actually accept. On the Convention, a public document from another Contracting State needs only an apostille from the issuing country's competent authority, and consular legalisation should not be required. The alternative route described in law-firm guidance is the older three-step chain: notarisation in the country of execution, then attestation by that country's ministry of foreign affairs, then legalisation by the Omani embassy there.
We looked for an official Omani page setting out what the notary public, the Real Estate Registry or the courts require of a foreign power of attorney, and found none. We also found no official page naming Oman's competent authority for issuing apostilles, and no fee for that service.
Practically: if you are in a Contracting State, get the apostille, but ask the receiving body in Oman before you post the original. The embassy route costs more and takes longer, and you do not want to discover you needed it after the instrument has already crossed a border.
How to revoke one
The Notary Public Department documents three ways a power of attorney ends before its term, all processed electronically and all resulting in cancellation: an acknowledgment by the grantor dismissing the agent; a court ruling or a reconciliation report; or the agent's own waiver. The first is the ordinary route — you attend and record the dismissal, producing the original instrument.
One superseded figure to watch for. A widely republished 2017 law-firm note states that an Omani power of attorney terminates automatically after two years. SJC Decision 234/2022 sets the maxima at five years and one year depending on category, and it post-dates that note by five years. Treat the two-year figure as stale. We could not verify from a free primary source what the Civil Transactions Law, Royal Decree 29/2013 says about agency — the article numbers for the wakala chapter were behind a paywall or returned nothing — so we are not printing article numbers from it, and neither should anyone quoting us.
What the official record does not say
- There is no official published power-of-attorney form. No Ministry of Housing template exists for a property sale power of attorney.
- The implementing regulation of RD 56/2026 is still pending. That regulation is what would let the Minister of Housing and Urban Planning license governmental and private entities to authenticate real estate instruments — so despite the new power, there is still no operating private notary channel in Oman.
- MD 570/2025 contains no power-of-attorney fee. Powers of attorney are not addressed in any annex of the Ministry of Housing schedule.
- No official source names Oman's competent authority for issuing apostilles, or the fee.
- The decision number behind the March 2025 notary fee abolitions was not locatable on either qanoon.om or decree.om.
- The agency provisions of the Civil Transactions Law could not be retrieved from a free primary source.
Can a Sanad centre do this for you
Not the execution itself, as far as we can establish — and we would rather say that plainly than sell you something. Sanad centres are regulated by the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion, not by the judiciary, and no gov.om, Supreme Judicial Council or ministry source lists notary transactions among the services they are authorised to deliver. The structural reason is straightforward: the grantor must appear in person before the notary, and authentication runs through a one-time password to a phone registered with the Royal Oman Police. Neither step can be performed by a third party on your behalf. Treat this as an unconfirmed limitation rather than a settled rule, because no official page states it either way.
How much does a power of attorney cost in Oman?
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Can I grant an Omani power of attorney from abroad?
Getting it done
What we can genuinely help with is everything either side of the counter: identifying the right category from the twenty on the list, getting supporting documents translated into Arabic by a certified translator as Article 17 requires, checking whether your transaction falls into the two-witness set, and watching the one-year clock on a property or vehicle instrument. The appearance and the OTP are yours. Bring the right phone number.