“Over the past 40 years, the government was like our mother,” said Mohammed al-Salmi, a financial analyst at the Central Bank of Oman.

​Like other Gulf states, Oman does not grant citizens freedom of expression or the right to choose their leader, but it does provide citizens a range of material advantages: public sector jobs, subsidies, free health care and education, a free plot of land, a pension and no income tax.

However, Oman’s public debt has skyrocketed since oil prices declined in 2014, going from less than 5% of Oman's gross domestic product to nearly 60% last year. Until 2023, annual budgets were already expected to be in the red. But the 2020 fiscal deficit is expected to be four times higher than previously forecasted because of the double shock of the COVID-19 pandemic and plunging oil prices, credit rating agency Fitch estimated.

To reverse the trend, the cash-strapped Omani government is expected to cut down on public expenditures and impose austerity measures. But such a move would revamp the model of governance that has prevailed since the late Qaboos bin Said ascended to the throne in 1970.