Oman’s agriculture ministry and Atyab Group have signed an agreement to develop a food-security observatory intended to bring information on domestic production, imports and prices together in one place. The proposed platform is intended to help officials identify threats to food supplies before their effects reach markets and consumers.
The agreement was signed in Muscat on 11 November on the sidelines of the 2026 Food Security Lab. Dr Ahmed bin Nasser Al Bakri, the ministry’s undersecretary for agriculture, signed for the government, while Haitham Mohammed Al Fannah signed for Atyab Group.
The observatory is connected with Oman’s national food-security early-warning system. Its proposed scope includes information about food produced in Oman and imports from different countries, alongside their prices. It is also intended to monitor strategic food commodities, showing supplying countries, price movements and the level of self-sufficiency for each commodity.
Bringing indicators together
The plan is to combine local and global indicators on a single platform for specialists in the relevant authorities. Those specialists would be able to use the information to prepare plans for addressing challenges involving food commodities. The agreement describes an approach to warning and preparation, rather than a specific response to an identified shortage.
Looking at domestic output alongside imports would give the authorities a way to consider different parts of the supply picture together. The proposed commodity-level information would also distinguish between products, rather than treating food as a single undifferentiated category. Price movements and the countries supplying a commodity are among the indicators the project is intended to display.
The announcement does not establish that the observatory is already operating. It does not give a date for the platform to become available, identify the full list of commodities to be covered or explain how often the information would be updated. Nor does it say which of its data, if any, would be available to the public.
Production and imports in focus
At the opening of the food-security lab on 1 November, an official from Oman’s National Centre for Statistics and Information presented figures for food available in the country in 2025. The value was put at approximately 5.2 billion Omani rials, comprising 2.9 billion rials from local production and 2.3 billion from imports. The same presentation put the value of domestic food consumption at 4.2 billion rials.
The figures are values for the year, not a count of individual products or a measure of the proposed observatory’s performance. They show why both local production and imports are relevant to the information the project is designed to assemble, but they do not establish how the platform will calculate self-sufficiency for each commodity.
Earlier government figures for the end of 2025 illustrate differences between food groups. The agriculture ministry reported fish self-sufficiency at 146 per cent and vegetable self-sufficiency at 77 per cent. Those measures concern particular categories; they are not a single figure for all food, nor do they show what individual households can afford.
A wider programme
The food-security lab began in Muscat on 1 November as part of a programme focused on investment, production and food-sector development. Its stated areas of work include support for local output, manufacturing industries and the use of technology. Government bodies, state-owned enterprises, private-sector organisations and civil society groups were expected to participate.
Another agreement signed alongside the lab concerns a project to enhance the value added to agricultural products. The ministry signed that agreement with the Oman Food Investment Company, with the stated aim of developing local products and improving their opportunities in the market. It is a separate project from the observatory.
For the monitoring project, the confirmed step is the agreement between the ministry and Atyab Group. Its stated purpose is to make information available in a form that can support earlier planning. The timing of implementation, the detail of the warning process and the eventual operation of the platform remain to be established.
