People are coming in to restaurants and drinking Coca Cola. Tax hikes, budget cuts and borrowing are not the only methods which the government has employed. Under a pegged exchange rate regime, they will either have to raise domestic interest rates or cut public expenditures to curtail aggregate demand, or they will have to increase markedly the amount of public sector external debt. The picture is bleak, but it is not all doom and gloom. Oman has oil reserves and it has LNG, and by the year 2001 there will be an increase in the oil price.
Oman needs to reduce the number of expatriate workers.
The amount of money expatriates are transferring is close to 40 to 50 per cent of the oil income. It also needs to develop supplementary industries - specialised industries, not the same ones as in all the other GCC countries. The most comprehensive survey of executive salaries in the region. The latest ranking of the Gulf's best business cities, based on their economic weight and their importance as centres of international business.