Average salary increase of five percent are forecast to be seen in Oman next year, down from 5.7 percent in 2012, Hay Group has said.
It said the oil and gas industry, which is Oman’s principle economic sector, rose seven percent in the last 12 months
Its report analysed salary information for 35,000 employees from 106 organisations in Oman.
Hay Group’s Warren D’Cruz said: “The rise in salaries over the last 12 months has predominantly taken the form of an increment on basic salary which has risen by 5.7 percent.
“This is due to the optimistic economic climate and investments in national infrastructure. The pressure on allowances is not the same as elsewhere in the GCC, so we see employers increasing salaries rather than adding to allowances such as housing, transport and education.”
He added that the majority of pay rises were awarded to supervisory and management level employees.
“This is largely a knock-on effect from last year’s minimum wage increase which was highest in the oil and gas sector,” D’Cruz added.
Harish Bhatia, who also worked on the Hay Group report, added that salaries in Oman today stood in the mid-ranks of the regional economies.
“If we look at ‘real’ pay rises which take into account inflation, the stable inflation rate and economic environment in Oman result in larger rises in real terms compared with other GCC countries,” he said.
While Hay Group found that the banking and oil and gas sectors still dominated, the gap between pay in these sectors and the rest of the market was less pronounced than in other GCC markets.
Bhatia said: “The Omani national workforce, although concentrated in the prime sectors of oil and gas and banking, is also well represented across other industries.
“This is unlike the UAE and Qatar where more than 70 percent of the national private sector workforce is employed in these prime sectors, thus skewing the market in terms of pay.”
He said there were “still challenges” for Oman’s nationalisation agenda especially in the retail and FMCG sectors.
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