Oman population hits 3.83mn mark

The National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI) in its latest bulletin has put the country's population at 3.83mn at the end of February 2013.

Of this, 2.15mn Omanis account for 56 per cent, with 1.68mn expatriates making up the remaining 44 per cent. In comparison, Oman's population according to the 2010 census was 2.77mn of which 1.96mn were Omanis and 816,000 were expatriates.

Expatriate population in the country has increased by 106.4 per cent catapulting the growth of the total population by 38 per cent since the last census in 2010. The Omani population has grown by 9.7 per cent in the same period.

Of the 1.68mn expatriates, 1.35mn were employed by the private sector of which 44 per cent (597,924) were employed in the construction sector alone.

The next two biggest sectors in terms of expatriate employees, at about 12 per cent each, are manufacturing followed by wholesale, retail trade and repair of motor vehicles.

The number of Omanis in the private sector hasn't changed much since June 2010 when 170,322 were employed by the sector to 173,382 at the end of February 2013, an increase of 1.7 per cent.

The governorate of Muscat is the most populated with over 1.15mn people, an increase of 48 per cent (775,878) over 2010. Batinah is second with 966,734 people, an increase of 25 per cent (772,590) as against 2010. Population in Sharqiyah went up by 38.5 per cent to 485,652, followed by Dakhliyah 381,936, while Dhofar has 364,155 people.

According to NCSI, 42 per cent of expatriates (703,793) live in Muscat governorate, followed by Batinah with 285,642 and Dhofar with 184,186 people.

Population growth

Year                               Omani          Expats           Total
2010                           1,957,000        816,000         2,773,000
2011                           2,013,000        1,282,000      3,295,000
February 2013             2,146,924       1,684,629       3,831,553