If you have been told you need a minimum number of trucks or a minimum paid-up capital to hold a land transport licence in Oman, ask where that came from. We read the Land Transport Law and its executive regulations line by line looking for both. Neither is there.
No minimum fleet, no minimum capital
Royal Decree 10/2016, the Land Transport Law, and Ministerial Decision 2/2018, its executive regulations, prescribe no minimum vehicle count for any of the licensed activities. Nor does Ministerial Decision 47/2023, which amended the regulations. Nor does MTCIT, gov.om or the Naql platform publish one anywhere. There is also no capital requirement in either instrument, and none on any ministry page.
The only numeric fleet rule in the regulations runs in the opposite direction to the one people expect. An individual applicant must not have more than one land transport vehicle. If you want a fleet, you need an establishment or a company — not because a minimum forces you up, but because a maximum stops you staying an individual.
If a guide quotes you a minimum number of trucks, or a minimum paid-up capital, or anything of that shape, it is not citing Omani law, because Omani law does not contain such a number.
One published logistics guide we reviewed quotes registration fees of OMR 100–300, licensing of OMR 200–500, and total start-up of OMR 3,000–7,000. It cites no source for any of it, and it names MOCIIP as the licensing body — which, as below, is the wrong ministry. Treat the whole set as an estimate by the firm that wrote it, not as a requirement.
MTCIT licenses land transport, not MOCIIP
This is the single most common error in published guides. Article 3(a) of RD 10/2016 provides that no land transport activity may be conducted without a licence, and Article 4 gives the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology exclusive authority to issue those licences and the operating cards that go with them.
The Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion issues your commercial registration and controls which activities sit on it. It does not license you to move goods or people. You need both, in that order, and getting the ministry wrong costs you a wasted trip and sometimes a wasted month.
The four licence categories
Article 2 of MD 2/2018 defines the licensed land transport activities. There are four, and they are regulated quite differently from each other, so decide early which one you are in:
- Passenger transport by bus — نقل الركاب بالحافلات
- Taxi activity — نشاط الأجرة
- Rental of land transport vehicles — نشاط تأجير وسائل النقل البري
- Goods transport — نشاط نقل البضائع
Smart transport applications are handled separately: Naql, MTCIT's land transport platform, carries a distinct service for registering a smart application licence. Naql also handles exceptional load permits, trailer and rental vehicle registration, parking area and advertisement licences, taxi plate registration and transfer, and permits for foreign vehicles. Most services need a PKI login; Naql lists Sanad offices and Oman Post as the alternative counters.
What the licence costs
Annex 1 to MD 2/2018 sets the fee schedule. One caveat before you use it: the Arabic PDF published on the ministry's own platform extracts with corrupted character encoding, so we took these figures from the clean text on qanoon.om. Before you rely on an exact figure, confirm it against the Official Gazette text or at the counter.
| Service | Establishment | Individual |
|---|---|---|
| Licence issuance | OMR 50 | OMR 25 |
| Licence renewal | OMR 50 | OMR 25 |
| Operating card issuance | OMR 30 | OMR 15 |
| Operating card renewal | OMR 30 | OMR 15 |
| Branch licence | OMR 50 | — |
| Data modification request | OMR 10 | OMR 10 |
The exceptional load transport permit is charged separately at OMR 10 per axle. Individual gov.om service pages corroborate the operating card figures exactly, and add processing times:
| gov.om service | Fee | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Licence for land transport by trucks for goods | OMR 25 | 3 days |
| Licence for regular passenger transport by bus (international) | OMR 25 | 1 day |
| Vehicle operating card for goods — individual / company | OMR 15 / OMR 30 | 1 day |
| Approval to register a commercial transport vehicle | OMR 15 / OMR 30 | 1 day |
| Taxi plate registration approval — individual | OMR 15 | 1 hour |
There is one unresolved discrepancy in that pair of tables. MD 2/2018 sets licence issuance at OMR 50 for establishments and OMR 25 for individuals, while the gov.om truck licence page shows a flat OMR 25 with no distinction. The likeliest explanation is that gov.om displays only the individual rate, but the page does not say so. Assume OMR 50 if you are licensing as a company and be pleased if it is less.
Naql's FAQ prices the taxi licence at OMR 25 per person, while the gov.om page headed *Get Taxi Operating Card* actually describes taxi plate registration at OMR 15. Both are consistent with MD 2/2018 — a licence at OMR 25 and an operating card at OMR 15 — but the gov.om page is titled wrongly, which is how people end up paying for the wrong thing.
gov.om also marks the truck goods licence and the international bus licence as Coming soon, while the equivalent services are already live on Naql. If a gov.om page tells you a service does not exist yet, check Naql before believing it.
Validity, and the 90-day cliff
Article 12 of MD 2/2018 sets both the licence and the operating card at one year, renewable for like periods. Renewal must be applied for 30 days before expiry, and a card that is not renewed lapses automatically after 90 days. Vehicle operating cards have been mandatory for all commercial vehicles since 1 December 2019 and renew annually.
Vehicles: approval, registration, operating card
Registering a commercial vehicle in Oman is a two-stage process and the order matters. MTCIT approval comes first, then the Royal Oman Police registration, then the operating card. You cannot transport goods before the approval is issued.
- Apply to MTCIT for approval to register the vehicle for commercial use — OMR 15 for individuals, OMR 30 for companies, about one day.
- Pass technical inspection at the ROP Directorate General of Traffic.
- Complete registration with the ROP vehicle registration department.
- Apply on Naql for the vehicle operating card, one per vehicle.
- Renew the operating card annually, at least 30 days before it expires.
Two details that catch people out. Trailers additionally require a copy of the design showing dimensions, axle count and axle weight. And a vehicle approved for off-road operation may not be driven on paved roads while carrying goods — an approval is for a use, not just for a vehicle.
Vehicle age limits
| Vehicle | Maximum age | Extension |
|---|---|---|
| Buses | 7 years from manufacture | Up to 3 more years on technical inspection |
| Taxis — establishments | 7 years | None stated |
| Taxis — individuals | 10 years | None stated |
MD 2/2018 sets no age limit at all for goods vehicles. That is a real finding rather than an omission on our part — we looked for one specifically. If you are buying used trucks, the constraint is technical inspection and insurance, not a statutory age ceiling.
Tracking systems are mandatory
MD 47/2023, issued 13 February 2023 and published in Official Gazette No. 1481 on 20 February 2023, made tracking systems compulsory in all land transport vehicles. A new Article 28 bis extends the same obligation to foreign-registered vehicles, which must install and operate a tracker throughout their stay in Oman. The same decision requires trucks to comply with ministry-designated routes and schedules across the road network.
The penalty is specific and it is aimed squarely at operators who think a tracker is optional: an administrative fine of OMR 400 for tampering with a tracking system, doubled on repeat violation, and licence revocation on the third offence.
Drivers
Article 29 of MD 2/2018 covers drivers of goods vehicles and buses. The requirements are short and hard:
- Age 21 to 60 — for taxi drivers this may be extended on a medical certificate.
- Proven medical fitness.
- No more than 8 consecutive hours driving.
- Taxi drivers additionally need a light vehicle licence held for at least 3 years and completion of an approved taxi driver training programme.
MD 47/2023 added more. Drivers must complete safe-driving training at ministry-approved institutions, operators must complete activity-related training at approved institutions, and medical fitness must be re-checked every two years at authorised Omani healthcare facilities. Vehicles must be parked only in designated areas.
Nationality: taxi is Omani-only, freight is not
The nationality restriction in Omani land transport is narrower and more specific than the sector-wide rule people assume. It lives in the regulations, not the investment negative list, and it applies to taxi only. Article 37 requires an individual taxi operator to be Omani and to own the vehicle. Article 39 requires taxi drivers employed by companies to be Omani.
For goods transport and bus passenger transport, MD 2/2018 imposes no nationality condition at all on establishments, and RD 10/2016 does not address the nationality of operators anywhere in its text.
Two things are true and they are not the same thing. General road freight and bus passenger transport are not on the foreign investment negative list, and the land transport regulations impose no nationality condition on them.
What we did not find is any MTCIT or MOCIIP page affirmatively stating that a foreign-owned company may hold a land transport licence. So the accurate position is *not prohibited, and no nationality condition is stated* — not *100% foreign ownership is permitted*. That is an inference from two absences, and a strong one, but it is still an inference. Get it confirmed in writing before you commit capital to a fleet.
The negative list is narrower than you think
Ministerial Decision 209/2020, dated 8 December 2020, lists the activities closed to foreign investment. Its transport and logistics entries are strikingly specific rather than sector-wide:
- 492203 — transport of Hajj and Umrah pilgrims
- 492306 — road freight transport by truck of cooking gas cylinders
- 522401 — loading and unloading of goods
- 522901 — customs clearance offices
Ministerial Decision 364/2023 later added vehicle towing and recovery. Ministerial Decision 435/2024, dated 29 August 2024, added a further 28 activities, none of them transport or logistics, bringing the list to 123 activities. General road freight is not on it. Neither is general bus passenger transport. Cargo handling and customs clearance are — which matters if you were planning an integrated operation that does its own loading or clears its own goods for third parties.
Omanisation in transport
Ministerial Decision 501/2024, effective 2 September 2024 and phasing in through 2027, restricts a list of professions to Omanis. As reported by KPMG and EY, the transport-adjacent entries are limited to marine controllers and ship traffic controllers from 1 January 2025. No driver, logistics, warehousing or customs-clearance occupation appears among the enumerated professions.
Separately, MTCIT has announced Omanisation targets across maritime, air and land transport: 20% for 2024, ranging from 20% to 50% from 2025, phased annually towards 100%, with implementation from January 2025 through 2027 and plans extending to 2040.
The 20%, 50% and 100% figures come from ministerial statements reported in the press. We could not find a gazetted ministerial decision setting them, and there is no decision number attached to them anywhere we looked.
Take the direction of travel seriously — it is consistent and repeatedly stated. Do not treat the specific percentages as legal quotas you can plan a headcount against, and do not let anyone quote them at you as though they were.
What no official source publishes
Stated plainly, because these gaps are where guides start inventing:
- No minimum fleet size anywhere in RD 10/2016, MD 2/2018, MD 47/2023, MTCIT, gov.om or Naql.
- No minimum capital for a transport company in any of those instruments or pages.
- No consolidated English statement of licence conditions from MTCIT. The substantive conditions exist only in the Arabic text of MD 2/2018; the English ministry page is a short bullet summary.
- No separate freight forwarding, 3PL or warehousing licence that we could confirm exists. These appear to be commercial registration activities under MOCIIP, with an MTCIT road transport licence needed only if you run your own vehicles — but no official page states this either way.
- No minimum insurance sum. MD 2/2018 requires an insurance policy from individual applicants but names no figure.
- No published age limit for goods vehicles, as above.
Penalties for operating without a licence
Article 60 of RD 10/2016 punishes practising a land transport activity without a licence with one to six months' imprisonment and/or a fine of OMR 100 to OMR 500. Article 63 provides fines of up to OMR 500 for breaches of the regulations, and Article 64 allows administrative penalties of up to OMR 500. The tracker-tampering fine of OMR 400 under MD 47/2023 sits inside that administrative band.
Is there a minimum number of vehicles or a minimum capital for a transport licence in Oman?
Which ministry licenses a transport company in Oman?
How much does a land transport licence cost in Oman?
Can a foreigner own a transport company in Oman?
Is there an age limit for trucks in Oman?
How long does a transport licence last in Oman, and what happens if you miss the renewal?
Getting it done
The practical sequence is: get the right activity onto your commercial registration, apply to MTCIT for the licence, get vehicle approval before you buy or register anything, then take each vehicle through ROP registration and its operating card on Naql. Our office in Al Ghubra handles the MTCIT and Naql side of that, including operating card renewals before the 90-day lapse turns into a re-application.