Oman ranks high in human development

MUSCAT, JAN 1 - The Sultanate has improved its ranking in the Human Development Index 2019 issued by the United Nations Development Programme. With one notch up against the previous year, Oman is now ranked 47th out of 189 countries and the fifth in the Arab and Gulf region. The Sultanate maintained its rank among the countries with very high human development. According to a report by the National Centre for Statistics and Information, the Sultanate got 0.834 points in the classification with a value ranging between zero and 1. “This shows improvement in all the main indicators in the classification”, the report said quoting the UN study, which is a brief measurement of human development. It measures the average achievements in a country for three basic dimensions of human development: long and healthy life, knowledge acquisition and an adequate standard of living. Oman achieved a remarkable rise, reaching 9.7 compared to 9.5 in 2018, to advance to the second rank in the Gulf, in partnership with Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The Sultanate has also achieved a remarkable increase in the number of expected study years to 14.7 compared to 13.9 in the 2018 report, and it is also the most improved Gulf country in the index for this year. With regard to the extent of obtaining the resources necessary to achieve a decent standard of living, the average per capita GDP of the Sultanate was $37,039, and the life expectancy at birth in the Sultanate was 77.6 years. This achievement comes in the context of the upward trend of the Sultanate since its inclusion in the Human Development Index in 2000, when the Sultanate obtained 0.704 points in 2000. In 2010 it got 0.793 points.