Population of Oman increased by just 17,734 last year
The total population of Oman increased by just 17,734 or 0.38 per cent in the year 2019 as compared to the year before. This was due to the expatriate population coming down by 58,106 although population of Omani citizens increased by 75,840.
According to the National Centre for Statistics and Information, the population of Oman at the end of 2019 was 4,664,844, while in 2018 it was 4,647,110. In 2019, of the total population, 57.7 per cent (2,692,756) were Omanis, an increase of 75,840 over 2018 when the Omani population stood at 2,616,916.
While expats formed 42.3 per cent or 1,972,088 of the population in 2019, a decline of 58,106 over 2018 when the expat population was 2,030,194.
As a result of the decline in expatriate numbers, the population of Muscat, where expatriates form the bulk of the population, also came down by 1.56 per cent or by 22,831 in the year 2019. The total population of Muscat in 2019 was 1,443,926, while it was 1,466,757 in 2018.
The number of expats in Muscat in 2018 was 914,834, which came down by 38,759 to 876,075 in 2019. Omani population increased by 15,928 in 2019 while it was 567,851 from 551,923 in 2018.
Additionally, the total working expatriate population in Oman came down by 4.2 per cent in 2019 as compared to the official figures at the end of 2018. There was a fall of 74,649 expatriate workers as expatriate population came down from 1,787,447 in 2018 to 1,712,798 in 2019.
Bangladeshi citizens, though still comprise the largest expatriate workforce, was also down by 4.2 per cent in 2019, when it was 630,681 compared to 658,222 in 2018. More than 43,000 Indian expatriate workers left in 2019 a decline of 6.5 per cent (617,730) as compared to 660,736 in 2018.
There is a decline of 4.7 per cent in the Pakistani expatriate workforce (207,288) as well when compared to the 2018 figure of 217,602. The maximum percentage fall of 32.9 per cent has been witnessed among the Ugandan expatriate workers. The number of Ugandan workers in 2018 was 31,288 and it came down to 20,997 in 2019.
Expatriate Egyptian worker numbers have gone up by 10.54 per cent, Sri Lankans by 10.4 per cent and Filipinos by 3.3 per cent during the same period.