Good morning, friends — and our apologies for being a few minutes late getting into your inboxes today.
Many of us will be keeping an eye on the news tonight: US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will take a podium at 9pm UAE time in Washington to unveil what he spent the weekend billing as an “economic D-Day” for Iran.
Meanwhile in Paris, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salmanis on day two of his visitto the French capital with seven ministers in tow, with the first-ever meeting of the Franco-Saudi Strategic Partnership Council on the program and agreements expected across tech, transport, energy and health. Riyadh and Paris are talking about alternatives to Hormuz — maritime workarounds, pipelines, regional rail.
One meaningful date for the fall and winter event calendar is now nailed down: F1 confirmed yesterday that the season ends exactly where it was always supposed to — Yas Marina on 6 December, with Qatar on 29 November — after March’s cancellations in Bahrain and Saudi left the back end of the calendar looking distinctly wobbly. “The calendar is confirmed, and we stay focused on delivering the calendar we promised at the beginning of the year,” Stefano Domenicali said. Abu Dhabi is down to limited ticket availability, Ethara took Promoter of the Year, and the post-race bill reads Andrea Bocelli, Lewis Capaldi, Zara Larsson and Imagine Dragons. The confirmation of an event after most spring and summertime events and conferences were canceled is a signal that, one way or another, business as usual is making a return. –Salma
Indian fintechs have all but given up on winning the Gulf’s fintech customers. The region’s consumer market — buy now, pay later, digital wallets, everyday payments — already belongs to Tabby, Tamara, and a cluster of well-capitalized local players. The window of competition now is narrowing down to the infrastructure that makes them possible.
The Saudi Central Bank (Sama) authorized Bengaluru-based TotalPay in July to operate as an e-commerce payment technical service provider, making it the first Indian fintech with specific KSA authorization to deploy payment gateway and orchestration architecture to Saudi merchants, as we reported at the time. Six months earlier, PineLabs signed a partnership with Abu Dhabi-based Wio Bank — a digital lender backed by ADQ, Alpha Dhabi, and First Abu Dhabi Bank (FAB) — to run its merchant acquiring stack on Pine Labs’ cloud-native Credit+ platform.
The Gulf had a genuine consumer-credit gap — young, mobile-first consumers, a large thin-file expatriate population, low credit-card penetration, demand for zero-interest, Shariah-compliant products — and Tabby and Tamara built the region’s first fintech unicorns off that gap.
But that gap, for now, appears to be full. “For an Indian entrant, the consumer seat was already taken by people who understood the consumer, the culture and the regulator better,” Jayaprakasan explains.
Two playbooks
While India regulation is contributing, the mismatch runs deeper. India’s own fintech breakout decade was built on a single, vast, homogeneous market, public rails like UPI, and unit economics tuned for enormous volume at very thin margins. “Almost none of that transfers,” Shane Shin, founding partner at Shorooq Partners, tells EnterpriseAM.
SOUND SMART- India’s Unified Payment Interface (UPI), the real-time mobile payments infrastructure India introduced in 2016 that catapulted its fintech industry, was also ahead of its time compared to similar systems among many emerging markets. That UPI system now processes a massive amount of instant transactions — last July alone, it processed 23.6 bn transactions worth some USD 314 bn.
The Gulf inverts nearly every one of those conditions — not one market but six central banks and six licensing regimes, each with its own rules on local ownership, data, and capital — and smaller populations that are far higher-value, which rewards depth and average revenue per user (ARPU) over volume.
Neither capital nor the product itself is the constraint. “It’s rarely a lack of capital that holds them back. It’s a lack of patience and localization,” Shin says. “Succeeding in the Gulf requires more than a strong product. Trust is earned with regulators, banks, enterprises and merchants over time… Those looking for a quick market entry may find it more challenging than expected,” Johnson Sasikumar, deputy CEO of the PayTabs Group, tells us. “Companies that invest in localization, long-term relationships and regional infrastructure will succeed. PayTabs is a Saudi-based fintech B2B player that entered the Indian market back in 2023 after acquiring Chennai-based OGS Pay.
The corridor is a real pull
India-UAE trade reachedUSD 101.25 bn in FY 2025-26, with both governments targeting USD 200 bn by 2032. India remains the world’s largest remittance market at roughly USD 135.4 bn in FY 2024-25, with the GCC a core source market of these remittances. Bengaluru-based OnFinance AI is opening its third global office in Dubai, and Indian companies now make up more than 30% of Dubai’s startup community, with c. 3.9k new Indian firms joining the Dubai Chamber of Commerce in 1Q 2026 alone. “Dubai is increasingly the headquarters of convenience, while India remains the engine,” Sidharth Sogani, founder and CEO of Manama-based BlueAster Capital, previously told us.
India is already exporting parts of its own sovereign fintech infrastructure to back the flow. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) co-built the UAE’s domestic card scheme, Jaywan, and has linked India’s Unified Payments Interface (UPI) with the UAE’s Aani instant-payments platform. That link-up is also expanding across the GCC, with NPCI also testing a UPI connection in Qatar, while exploring similar moves in other GCC markets.
Testing the alternative
India-basedPine Labs, however, is trying another direction: Sell the rails to other businesses, rather than go directly to consumers with a brand. That’s the smarter strategy for a market this contested, Jayaprakasan explains. “Indian companies must redesign products around the GCC’s country-specific card networks, domestic schemes, bank integrations, and compliance requirements to ride this next fintech wave,” he adds.
Infrastructure and B2B models can cross borders more cleanly than consumer ones, because a bank evaluating processing rails is buying engineering, not a brand relationship, Shin tells us. “Selling infrastructure to banks, fintechs and enterprises depends less on consumer trust and more on the quality of the technology, which is often exactly where these founders are world-class,” he explains.
Pine Labs’ partnership with Emirates NBD as a traditional bank serves as one of the early use cases for this cross-border ease argument. The pair signed an agreement back in 2024 where the India-based Pine Labs would provide the same merchant acquiring stack it is now setting up for Wio Bank to provide the same solution for NBD’s corporate and institutional clients, starting with the UAE and expanding later into Saudi and Egypt.
The incumbents are not sitting idly
But even that infrastructure-driven, B2B side of the fintech market is not without competition. Local incumbents aren’t just sitting on the consumer market; they’re also positioned to compete for the infrastructure layer Indian entrants are eyeing, Jayaprakasan cautions.
The field now has big names, Jayaprakasan tells us. The UAE-based Network International completed its merger with digital payments player Magnati, a subsidiary of FAB, under Brookfield-led ownership last October, creating a combined entity that serves more than 250 financial institutions, 240k businesses, and 20 mn cardholders across 50+ markets, with total payment volume north of USD 400 bn. “Geidea has built a strong Saudi position by pairing payments with restaurant, retail and business-management software; PayTabs, Tap Payments, HyperPay and Amazon Payment Services compete across online and omnichannel payments. Their edge isn’t the product,” he says.
“Enterprise payment decisions in the Gulf are rarely based on a single product or price point,” PayTabs’ Sasikumar tells us. Banks, governments, and large businesses want regulatory readiness, local infrastructure and long-term accountability. They want trust, and that isn’t transferable — it’s built market by market. “Scale in one market does not automatically translate into relevance in another,” he adds.
What Indian fintechs bring insteadis a cost-efficient, high-volume technology stack, tested at a scale few Gulf incumbents have had to operate at, plus deep engineering talent, Redseer’s Jayaprakasan says. Whether that's enough is the open question.
What separates the winners
Three things distinguish the Indian entrants that stick from the ones that stall, Shin says — and product quality isn’t one of them. Do they treat Gulf regulation as a moat to build early, or a tax to defer? Are they building for the market in front of them, or exporting something designed for somewhere else? And are the founders actually in the region, or running it at arm’s length from headquarters back home?
“The ones who fail tend to run the Gulf as a sales outpost. The ones who succeed either move, or bring on a serious local team with real authority,” Shin says.
The regulatory bar is about to rise across the entire class of fintech B2B providers. The Central Bank of the UAE’s Federal Decree-Law No. 6 of 2025 came into force last September, broadening the regulatory approach to bring open finance services, payment services using virtual assets, and enabling technologies explicitly under CBUAE licensing — and those enabling systems did not necessarily require licensing before. That means that such players now have until 16 September to obtain a license or approval; operating without one would become an offense carrying fines of up to AED 500 mn (USD 136.2 mn).
Where do Indian players go from here?
If there’s a sequence to how this plays out, Shin’s bet is infrastructure and B2B software first, AI-enabled financial services close behind, and consumer payments last, if at all. Consumer is the most crowded, most regulated, and most local part of the stack — exactly where Gulf incumbents and domestic rails are strongest, and where trust is slowest to win as an outsider. Meanwhile, the infrastructure layer is different. Issuing and processing infrastructure, embedded finance, regtech, SME-lending rails — sold to institutions on the strength of engineering, travel across borders far more cleanly than a consumer brand.
AI-driven financial services is the layer now forming on top of that, Shorooq’s Shin says, but he doesn’t expect the sharpest model to decide the winners. “The founders who understand that distribution and compliance beat novelty almost every time, wherever they’re from, are the ones worth watching,” he says.
What’s next: Sasikumar expects more Indian companies to establish partnerships, offices, or initial commercial operations across the Gulf to enter the fintech ecosystem. However, whether or not those translate into a meaningful and sustainable footprint will depend on their willingness to localize, he says. It also depends on their go-to-market localization — “the region is not one market. GCC countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, alongside markets such as Jordan and Egypt, each have their own regulatory frameworks and business dynamics,” he adds.
A heightened risk of conflict between Israel and Turkey has been the talk of the hour over the last few days amid rising incendiary rhetoric in Israel and following Israeli strikes on the Syrian airbase Abu Al Duhur under the pretense of possible Turkish military activity. Both Syria and Turkey vehemently denied current or planned presence in the airbase, with Syrian officials stressing the airbase was empty and under repair works when it was struck.
The attack undermines the US-led push for an Israel-Syria security agreement. Syria and Israel have been in discussions over a security arrangement, with Turkey and the US actively playing a mediation role. The US, Israel, and Syria signed the Joint Communication Mechanism with Syria in Paris in January 2026, establishing a “Joint Fusion Mechanism” for intelligence coordination and deconfliction, but talks towards a wider peace and security agreement had stalled, with both Syria and Turkey conditioning progress on halting Israel's expanding occupation in southern Syria.
Still, Syria and Israel are expected to resume talks soon, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad Al Shaibani said yesterday after a meeting with the Mossad chief, Axios reports.
The attack summoned a spate of global rebukes — and the sharpest came from the US. Washington’s ambassador to Ankara and special envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack, said on Saturday that Tuesday’s Israeli strike on the Abu Al Duhur air base in Idlib — 70 km from the Turkish border — may have been an attempt at “baiting the Turks” into a conflict ahead of Israel’s October election, in which Netanyahu is trailing in the polls, the Financial Times reports. Barrack said there were no Turkish military assets at the site and no plans to move any in, contradicting the Israeli rationale for the raid. Had Ankara scrambled fighter jets to intercept the Israeli warplanes, he said, the result could have been “World War Three.”
IN CONTEXT- An attack on Turkey would put NATO in a pickle. Turkey is a core member of the NATO defense alliance, and any Israeli attack would trigger Article 5, the collective defense clause, putting most of the European Union and the US at odds with their ride-or-die ally Israel. Last June, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte dodged questions on the risk of a Turkey-Israel conflict, putting the onus on Turkey to refrain from escalating. “Let me not speculate on that because, in the end... President Erdogan is an extremely wise president, and he will avoid getting into a situation which gets out of hand,” he said.
Meanwhile in the strait
Iran has granted permission for a number of Iraqi oil tankers to transit the Strait of Hormuz, Reuters reports, citing Tehran’s state news agency IRNA, following repeated requests from Baghdad and a visit by Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Ghalibaf.
Iraqi President Nizar Amedi confirmed the facilitation but called the situation “complicated” — an admission that this is an exception, not a reopening.
The math explains why. Iraq pumped roughly 4 mn barrels a day before the war. Strait traffic remains sharply below pre-war levels, and ships still face attacks in the area. Baghdad has no national tanker fleet, leaving it dependent on foreign vessels Iran can approve case by case — which is why it’s also pushing crude through Turkey’s Ceyhan, with Syria’s Baniyas and Jordan’s Aqaba next in line.
The region’s central banks are in a synchronized hold on rates. The Central Bank of Egypt’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) held rates for the fourth time on Thursday, keeping the overnight deposit rate at 19.0% and the lending rate at 20.0%. Turkey’s central bank held its one-week repo at 37% at its 13 August review, its fifth consecutive hold since a January cut. Tunisia also kept its key rate at 7.0% on 29 July, extending a pause that has now run through most of the year.
The GCC is sitting out August entirely, as is the US Fed. With the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) holding the US rates’ range at 3.50–3.75% in both June and July, the USD-pegged GCC central banks have had nothing to react to. Saudi’s SAMA is at 4.25% repo, the UAE’s at 3.65% base rate, Qatar at 3.85% deposit / 4.10% repo, and Bahrain at 4.25% overnight deposit — all unchanged since the Fed’s June pause. Kuwait and Morocco, which manages against a basket rather than a straight USD-peg, have stayed put, with Attijari Global Research expecting in a last June note that Morocco’s hold will run through year-end.
The story behind the synchronized hold isn’t the same in every market. Egypt is holding because disinflation has stalled — July urban inflation ticked back up to 14.9%, and the CBE's own base case still sees inflation averaging 16.6% in FY 2026/27 before returning to target in 2H 2027. Turkey is holding at 37% because inflation is still running above 32% and the CBRT is trying to protect a disinflation path it has barely begun. Tunisia is holding to consolidate the gains from two cuts in 2025 without choking off an economy the EBRD expects to grow around 2% this year. And the GCC and Jordan are holding by virtue of the USD-peg.
All eyes will turn to the US Federal Reserve for its September 17 decision. While initial forecasts were penciling in a cut before the end of the year, this is now increasingly unlikely due to inflationary pressures and supply shocks caused by the US’ war in the region — and despite Trump’s repeated political pressures on the Fed. Prediction markets now put a hold as the most likely possibility, whereas a hike of 25 bps is at 30% and a cut possibility at just 1%. JP Morgan Wealth Management shifted its base case to a September hike in early August.
We may have early signals about the direction of the Fed later this week, when Chair Kevin Warsh delivers his first Jackson Hole keynote on Friday.
IN CONTEXT- A hike would move the GCC pegs within 24 hours and tighten the external environment for the disinflation path in markets like Turkey, Tunisia, and Egypt. Egypt’s next MPC is October 2. Turkey’s next is September 11, with the central bank’s own year-end median aiming at a 35% rate, leaving one more cut before December still on the table.
A Fed hike would come at a moment when regional financing is already tightening. In Saudi Arabia, Al Rajhi, SNB, and Riyad Bank have all lowered 2026 loan-growth guidance in the past month as deposits are outpacing lending for a second straight quarter. An interest rate hike would further reduce demand for loans. And in venture and equities, the financing pain is already visible. International capital deployed to MENA startups fell 65% y-o-y in 1H 2026, with MENA-based investors now supplying 81% of regional funding (up from 58%). A US risk-free rate step-up shifts allocators’ math further against emerging-market equities and ventures at exactly the moment the region’s own capital is stretched to plug the international pullback.
A hike would also push the easing path in markets like Egypt further out. The CBE’s own base case is 16.6% inflation in FY 2026/27 with a return to the 7% ±2 target range in 2H 2027. That path was built on a benign external backdrop, but a Fed hike does two things simultaneously: it supports the USD, which the CBE has flagged as its single biggest inflation transmission channel, with about a 0.18 percentage point increase in headline inflation per 1% EGP depreciation, and it widens the differential Egypt needs to maintain to keep the USD 9.5 bn in portfolio outflows from worsening.
Lebanon’s banking reform gets a rare nod from the IMF: The IMF has called Lebanon’s recently passed Banking Restructuring Law a “major step,” signaling that parliament reached a version that is close enough to the Cabinet-backed version to keep talks on a rescue package moving. The amendments, passed last week, will restructure the Higher Banking Commission — the Banque du Liban body that will decide which lenders get restructured and which get liquidated. “We met 99% of what they wanted,” legislator Alain Aoun, who sits on parliament's Finance and Budget Committee, told Reuters.
But the IMF wants more from Lebanon before it moves ahead with a rescue package. “Effective implementation of this new bank resolution framework is critical,” Federico Lima, the IMF's representative in Lebanon, said last week. The multilateral lender will be looking at how Lebanon would allocate the roughly USD 70 bn in losses to depositors, a process that will be regulated by the Financial Stabilization and Deposit Recovery Law (FSDR), which is yet to be passed. It also wants to see changes to public tax regulations to spur domestic investments in reconstruction, and more importantly, enforcement:
REMEMBER- The Banking Restructuring Law establishes a framework for a state-led due diligence process on the country’s banks to assess which banks will be on the chopping block. The law was first passed in June last year, but IMF criticism and a decision from Lebanon’s Constitutional Council about the unconstitutionality of some of the provisions on accountability pathways and recapitalization mechanisms have forced a rewrite.
The IMF’s measured response to the new law comes as the World Bank writes off Lebanon’s recovery. The Bank now projects a 6.4% GDP contraction in 2026, reversing a 4% growth forecast and the 4.2% expansion recorded in 2025 — the fastest since 2019 — after regional escalation in Lebanon and the wider region damaged infrastructure, displaced communities, and gutted Lebanon’s GCC-dependent tourism and services exports sector.
“Advancing reforms — particularly on banking sector restructuring and fiscal management — will be critical to restoring confidence,” World Bank Middle East Director Dahlia Khalifa said. The Bank also flagged that public finances, which posted a 3.9% of GDP surplus in 2025, are set to come under pressure from reconstruction spending and wage demands in 2H.
What’s next: Now, Lebanon will look to advance the FSDR package through the Parliament — a harder lift that forces a question Lebanon’s political class has ducked for six years: who pays for the banking collapse. The Cabinet-proposed version currently stipulates that banks would cover just 40% of deposit recovery costs despite their deep involvement in the collapse, with the rest shifted onto treasury-backed state bonds, and haircuts on larger accounts. The Cabinet version also plans some USD 22 bn in repayments to smaller depositors over four years, including nearly USD 9.5 bn in the first year alone — a sum that Lebanese economists told us in May Lebanon doesn’t have.
Egypt dodges index downgrade: S&P Dow Jones Indices decided not to downgrade Egypt, confirming the country will keep its EM status, according to an EGX statement. The announcement closed out a review that started in June, when S&P proposed downgrading Egypt to Frontier Market status, a lower tier with less global investment money tracking it. EGX Chairman Omar Radwan told our Egypt desk the exchange made its case to S&P by pointing to Egypt’s improving fundamentals, including fewer delays getting foreign money in and out, record foreign currency reserves, and a record daily trading volume of EGP 15.6 bn.
Why it matters: Egypt makes up 0.12% of S&P’s Emerging Markets index. But if it had been downgraded, it would have jumped to about 3.4% of the much smaller Frontier index — nearly 29 times as large a share. That kind of jump forces index funds to buy or sell large amounts of Egyptian stocks automatically, regardless of how the companies are actually performing. Dodging the downgrade means Egypt avoids that disruption.
Speaking of FTSE: Telecom Egypt will move from small-cap to mid-cap in FTSE Russell’s Emerging Markets indices in the September semi-annual review, joining CIB and Talaat Moustafa Group as the third Egyptian company in the benchmark, according to a company statement. The upgrade follows the stock’s rally, which lifted the company’s market capitalization to around USD 3.9 bn, and will take effect on 21 September.
Abu Dhabi National Company for Building Materials (Bildco) is set to become a strategic shareholder at Al Khazna Ins. through a capital increase of up to AED 3 bn. The transaction would see Al Khazna issue new shares to Bildco, with the final stake, share count, and issue price to be set after valuation and subject to final agreements and regulatory approvals, according to ADX disclosures here (pdf) and here (pdf).
Why it matters: The transaction would bring a new strategic shareholder into Al Khazna after the CBUAE revoked its ins. license last year over continued non-compliance with licensing requirements. For Bildco, this is part of a much wider diversification push beyond construction materials. The company completed its 50% acquisition of food trader AG Group last month, after acquiring Arabian Nights Village last year, and has also moved into new investment and AI ventures while pursuing an engineering consultancy stake.
BinDawood Holding plans to invest up to SAR 1.5 bn in additional capital over the next two to three years, with the bulk earmarked for Saudi Arabia, after investing around SAR 1.8 bn in acquisitions since 2022, CEO Ahmed BinDawood told Al Arabiya Business.
REMEMBER- The retailer had a busy expansion period, completing its acquisition of a 51% stake in Vaza Food Company for SAR 217.9 mn. It also absorbed pharmacy chain Zahrat Al Rawdah, children’s toy distributor Toy Triangle, and marketing tech firm Mirror Mirror to diversify revenue away from pure-play grocery retail.
ALSO WORTH KNOWING TODAY-
The EGX will waive administrative service fees for the first 20 companies seeking an initial listing on its SME market that meet the required conditions and submit their listing documents by the end of 30 September, under an executive decision. The waiver covers fees for reviewing listing and securities-addition applications, plus the charge for publishing financial statements.
Syria’s Finance Ministry is introducing a cross-agency committee to lead the effort to get off the world’s anti-money laundering watchdog’s gray list, Minister Mohammed Yisr Barnieh announced. The new committee will work on developing a unified institutional framework for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing (AML/ CFT), and will include various financial, regulatory, and professional bodies such as the Financial Markets and Securities Commission, the Damascus Securities Exchange, state-owned banks and financial institutions.
Why this matters: Getting off the Financial Action Task Force (FATF) gray list is critical to de-risk Syria’s banking sector. It would incentivize foreign banks to resume banking connectivity and could help spur investments in Syria’s under-capitalized banking sector, we previously reported.
REMEMBER- Syria is in line to get off the list — the missing piece of the puzzle is an on-site visit by FATF that officials there have sidestepped, citing security concerns.
A little breathing room
Iranian contractors operating in Iraq may soon be allowed to receive financial guarantees backed by frozen Iranian funds in Iraq, Iraqi news outlet Shafaq reports, citing Iran’s central bank governor Abdolnaser Hemmati. Prime Minister Ali Al Zaidi already signed an executive order, with the access expected to begin in a few weeks, Hemmati said.
The mechanism doesn’t unfreeze the money outright, but rather lets Iranian contractors draw against it domestically, without it going through the US financial system. Iran holds an estimated USD 10-11 bn in energy receivables in Iraq — payments Baghdad owes for gas and electricity that pile up in restricted accounts because US sanctions block direct USD and EUR transfers to Iranian institutions.
The backdrop: The move comes after the UAE suspended all trade and financial transactions with Iran on 19 August — a move that came after weeks of US lobbying as it drums up its economic campaign against Iran as an alternative to military action.
Expanding
Our friends at Marakez are entering Egypt’s Red Sea coast for the first time, launching SHAMS SOMA with Somabay. The project will reportedly involve a 100-feddan integrated mixed-use tourism site in Somabay, targeting as much as EGP 40 bn in revenue, according to unnamed sources. Marakez, a unit of Saudi Arabia’s Fawaz Alhokair Group, has entered into a revenue-sharing agreement with Somabay.
What to expect: Marakez reportedly aims to develop residential and hotel units and commercial buildings. Sales for the project are scheduled to open before the end of 2026.
Why this matters: The move unites two players already betting on Egypt’s next wave of tourist-destination real estate. For Marakez, the venture marks an expansion beyond Cairo and the North Coast and into the Red Sea’s growing mixed-use tourism market. Somabay has been expanding both its hotel footprint and its residential offerings, with CEO Ibrahim El Missiri previously telling EnterpriseAM that the Red Sea is poised to become the country’s next major property hotspot, supported by its infrastructure and connectivity.
Baghdad and Riyadh are back on speaking terms: Iraqi Oil Minister Bassem Al Abadi was in Riyadh on Friday pitching joint gas, power, and electricity projects, Iraqi daily Shafaq reports. Both sides agreed to “high-level coordination” and to explore joint projects, Al Abadi said.
This is the highest-profile Iraqi visit to the kingdom since Prime Minister Ali Al Zaidicalled off his trip in late July over joint US-Saudi airstrikes on Iran-aligned PMF sites. Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein and his Saudi counterpart Prince Faisal bin Farhan spoke by phone earlier in the week to push de-escalation, Shafaq reports separately — with Riyadh renewing its invitation to Al Zaidi.
IN CONTEXT- Iraq needs all the investment partners it can get to achieve its self-proclaimed target of doubling oil production from some 4.5 mn bbl / d to 8-10 mn bbl / d.
Oman has a freezone pitch for its AI plans
Oman is establishing its first AI-focused special economic zone near Muscat International Airport, targeting OMR 106 mn (USD 275 mn) in investment across three phases, the Oman Observer reports. The zone will be developed and operated by Afouq Investment and Development United, and is planning to feature business incubators and accelerators, automation hubs, robotics labs, a data center, and cloud computing infrastructure.
What we know: Construction on phase 1 of the 104k sqm project is scheduled to begin in 4Q 2027. In the meantime, Afouq is in discussions with international tech firms — including IBM and Microsoft — as well as global universities to establish a specialized AI-focused university within the zone.
The question now is whether Oman has the right system in place to bring in the needed players to jumpstart its AI ecosystem, as it works on expanding the digital economy’s contribution to GDP to approximately 10% by 2040 (up from roughly 2% in 2021). The zone is planning to allow 100% foreign ownership and offer full tax exemption and streamlined corporate setup incentives — all usually solid pulls for foreign investors.
CEPA loading
Egypt and Qatar will begin negotiations in October on a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA), according to a Foreign Ministry statement. Cooperation on joint investments in African markets alongside Egyptian companies and the Sovereign Fund of Egypt was also under consideration at the seventh meeting of the Egypt-Qatar Joint Higher Committee in New Alamein in Egypt.
Solid partners already: Egypt-Qatar trade rose 10% to USD 72.4 mn in the first five months of 2026 compared to the same period last year. The planned talks follow the launch of the first phase of Qatari Diar’s Alam El Roum development on Egypt’s North Coast earlier this month. The first phase is expected to involve up to EGP 220 bn in investment across 4 mn sqm, while the wider project is expected to attract USD 29.7 bn and has initial deliveries targeted for 2030.
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