Middle East Construction
Oman starts four new industrial cities under its five year plan, with 25.5 million square metres in the ground
By Staff Writer | 13 August 2026
Development work has begun on industrial cities in four governorates, with the first phase already under construction at one of them and entrepreneurial and agricultural complexes planned at each.
Oman's Public Establishment for Industrial Estates, known as Madayn, is developing four new industrial cities under the eleventh five year development plan covering 2026 to 2030. The sites sit in North Batinah, North Sharqiyah, Dhofar and Musandam, and together cover roughly 25.5 million square metres. Three of the four are at Al Suwaiq, Al Mudhaibi and Thumrait.
The reasoning behind the locations is the plainest part of the announcement. Oman has concentrated industrial investment in a small number of established centres for years. Spreading it across governorates is intended to raise private sector participation, hold skilled people in the regions they come from and build a labour market that does not require everyone to move to the capital.
The projects involve the development of fully integrated industrial cities equipped with advanced infrastructure and logistics services.
Khalid bin Sulaiman Al Salehi, Director General of Marketing and Commercial Affairs at Madayn
What is being built, and how far it has gone
Al Suwaiq Industrial City in North Batinah is the largest of the four at approximately 12.2 million square metres, of which about 1.3 million square metres forms the first phase. That phase covers an entrepreneurial complex, an agricultural complex, a facility building, water and sewage networks, firefighting systems, internal roads and solar powered lighting.
Al Mudhaibi Industrial City in North Sharqiyah runs to nearly 9 million square metres with about 1.3 million square metres in the first phase. It is the one already under construction. The works there are costed at around 17 million rials and stood at 7 per cent complete when the programme was described. The finished city is to carry the same pairing of entrepreneurial and agricultural complexes with full infrastructure and utility networks.
Thumrait Industrial City in Dhofar covers 4 million square metres and takes an entrepreneurial complex, a facility building, internal roads, solar powered lighting and utility services. The fourth city, in Musandam governorate, is much smaller at 360,000 square metres, with an entrepreneurial complex supported by water, sewage and firefighting networks, internal roads and solar powered lighting.
Solar powered lighting and utility networks appear in the scope of every one of the four, which puts a common specification across sites in four different climates.
What it signals for contractors
The pattern is worth reading carefully. These are serviced land packages rather than single buildings: earthworks, roads, water, foul drainage, firefighting mains, power and lighting, delivered in phases sized at roughly 1.3 million square metres on the two largest sites. That is infrastructure and civils work, procured over several years, in governorates without deep contractor bases of their own.
The repetition of the entrepreneurial and agricultural complex format across all four also suggests standard designs, which usually means repeat packages and a steadier pipeline than one off schemes offer. The programme sits inside Oman Vision 2040 and its objectives of accelerating development across the governorates and broadening the economic base away from hydrocarbons.
Al Mudhaibi is the one to watch. At 7 per cent complete it is the only figure in the programme that comes from work already done rather than work intended, and the rate at which that percentage moves will say more about the other three than any plan document will.