Oman's E-Commerce Plan Hits 87%: What's Left Before 2027

Oman's Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Investment Promotion (MoCIIP) has confirmed that the National E-Commerce Plan 2022-2027 reached 86.7% completion by the end of 2025, with 26 of its 30 planned initiatives now delivered. According to Oman Observer, four additional initiatives were completed in the second half of 2025 alone, pushing the plan from 22 to 26 finished items with roughly a year and a half left on the clock.

🔑 Key Takeaways

• 86.7% of the National E-Commerce Plan is complete, with 26 of 30 initiatives finished
• 19,260 licensed e-commerce activities now exist in Oman, backed by 412 verified stores on the Maroof Oman trust platform
• Three flagship initiatives remain: the Makin digital skills programme, a national addressing system, and an electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC) system
• A 2023 ministerial decision already underpins consumer and merchant protection for online trade
• The plan is explicitly tied to Vision 2040's digital economy and competitiveness goals

📊 The Numbers Behind the Progress

The National E-Commerce Plan was launched in 2022 as a five-year roadmap running through 2027, built around five pillars: updated legislation, digital services, electronic payments, logistics, and consumer awareness. As Times of Oman reported, the plan's 86.7% completion rate as of end-2025 puts it firmly on track, with the ministry committing to finish the remaining initiatives by the 2027 deadline.

Nasra bint Sultan Al Habsi, Director General of Trade at MoCIIP, described the plan's purpose directly:

The four initiatives completed in the second half of 2025, as detailed by Muscat Daily, were: electronic payment awareness campaigns, a review and approval of electronic payment transaction fees, wider e-commerce awareness programs, and the integration of e-commerce concepts into school curricula. That last point signals the ministry is thinking beyond merchants and payments infrastructure toward building digital commerce literacy into the education system itself.

🛒 Maroof Oman: Building Trust in Online Shopping

One of the plan's most visible outputs is the Maroof Oman platform, a verification tool that lets shoppers check whether an online seller holds an official license before they buy. Per Muscat Daily and Oman Observer, the platform verified 412 online stores between February 2024 and August 2026, while the broader count of licensed e-commerce activities in the Sultanate has climbed to 19,260.

That gap between total licensed e-commerce activities (19,260) and platform-verified stores (412) illustrates both the scale of Oman's informal online retail sector and how much work remains to bring smaller sellers into a fully trusted, verifiable digital marketplace. It is exactly the kind of governance layer that Vision 2040 planners have flagged as necessary before e-commerce can meaningfully scale toward the target of contributing 10% of GDP through the digital economy, a goal outlined in MTCIT's 2026-2030 Digital Economy Roadmap.

⚖️ The Legal Backbone: Ministerial Decision 499/2023

Underpinning all of this is the Governance Regulation for Electronic Commerce, issued under Ministerial Decision No. 499/2023. According to both Oman Observer and Times of Oman, the regulation establishes frameworks for consumer rights protection, merchant safeguards, and pathways for SMEs to expand into digital channels. Without this legal scaffolding, initiatives like Maroof Oman verification and electronic payment fee reform would have far less enforcement weight behind them.

🚧 What's Left Before 2027

Three initiatives stand out among the remaining four on the ministry's list, and each has a clear technology dimension:

• Makin (National Digital Skills Programme): aimed at building the workforce capacity needed to sustain a digital economy, complementing broader Omanisation and upskilling efforts already underway in the tech sector.
• National Addressing System: a foundational logistics layer that has held back e-commerce delivery reliability in Gulf markets generally; solving it in Oman would directly support last-mile fulfillment for online sellers.
• Electronic Know Your Customer (eKYC): a digital identity verification system that would streamline onboarding for online payments, banking-linked commerce, and merchant registration alike.

Each of these initiatives touches infrastructure that other parts of Oman's tech ecosystem depend on. A working national addressing system, for instance, would benefit the logistics tech startups and fintechs the Sultanate has been actively courting through programs like the one covered in AI in Oman's coverage of the Sas for Excellence fund, which channels direct financing to local tech firms building exactly these kinds of digital services.

🎯 Connection to Vision 2040

Both Oman Observer and Times of Oman explicitly frame the National E-Commerce Plan as aligned with Vision 2040's digital transformation and economic diversification pillars. E-commerce is one of the more measurable proxies for how well Oman is executing on its broader ambition to reduce oil dependency and grow non-oil digital sectors. For readers tracking Oman's national scorecard beyond headline announcements, the sister publication omanvision2040.com recently catalogued several under-the-radar Vision 2040 deliverables from the past year, and this e-commerce progress report fits the same pattern of steady, incremental execution rather than splashy one-off announcements.

💼 Impact on Oman's Economy and Startup Ecosystem

For Omani entrepreneurs and SMEs, the practical upside of these initiatives is straightforward: lower friction for setting up and operating an online storefront, more trustworthy payment rails, and (once the addressing system and eKYC are live) faster onboarding and delivery. The e-commerce plan doesn't generate the same headlines as a nine-figure AI investment, but it is arguably more consequential for the thousands of small merchants and digital-first businesses that make up the bulk of Oman's private sector employment base.

It also complements the wave of local SaaS and fintech activity the Sultanate has seen this year, from accounting and payroll tools built for Omanisation compliance to invoicing platforms preparing for e-invoicing mandates. A more reliable digital commerce backbone, backed by verified identity and addressing systems, is the kind of unglamorous infrastructure that makes all of that downstream innovation easier to build on.

🇴🇲 Why This Matters for Oman

Vision 2040 sets an ambitious target for the digital economy's share of GDP, and e-commerce is one of the most direct, measurable channels through which ordinary Omani businesses can participate in that growth. Reaching 86.7% completion on a five-year plan with 18 months still on the clock is a credible sign of execution, not just intention. The remaining three initiatives, digital skills, national addressing, and eKYC, are foundational rather than cosmetic: they are the plumbing that determines whether Oman's next generation of online retailers, delivery startups, and digital-first SMEs can operate at regional scale. As the ministry pushes toward 2027, how quickly it closes these final gaps will say a lot about Oman's readiness to compete with more digitally mature Gulf neighbors on e-commerce infrastructure.