Sultan Haitham bin Tarik’s first state visit to Astana, on 5–6 October, produced five agreements and ten memoranda: investment protection, an air services deal, a joint fund between the two sovereign investors — and a proposal to route Kazakh trade through Omani ports.
Sultan Haitham bin Tarik arrived in Astana on 5 October, the first Omani sultan to visit Central Asia, and on 6 October he and President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev witnessed the exchange of five agreements and ten memoranda of understanding at the Palace of Independence. The core is institutional: an intergovernmental agreement on the promotion and reciprocal protection of investments, an air services agreement, an Oman–Kazakhstan Business Council, and an implementation agreement between Samruk-Kazyna and the Oman Investment Authority to set up a joint investment fund. The same two institutions exchanged a term sheet for a Rixos hotel project at Blue City in Oman. The wider package reaches into transport, agriculture, technology, healthcare, mining and renewable energy.
Two items stand apart. Oman is set to become the eighth shareholder of the Eurasian Development Bank — the first Gulf state to join and the first member from outside the former Soviet Union — under an agreement signed by Finance Minister Sultan bin Salim Al Habsi and the bank’s chairman, Nikolai Podguzov. And the Sultan put geography on the table: “We look forward to developing cooperation in transport and logistics, including the development of a trade corridor through Oman’s ports, as well as strengthening air links between our countries.” For the world’s largest landlocked country, that is a route to the Indian Ocean that runs neither north nor across the Caspian.
Why it matters
Kazakhstan’s constraint has never been what it produces; it is how few doors the produce can leave through. Last year 64.8 million of the 78.7 million tonnes of oil it exported went down a single pipeline. That is why the shareholders of Tengiz and Kashagan are now studying a trans-Caspian route sized for up to 35 million tonnes a year, with a feasibility study due in November — and why a Gulf port offer lands in Astana as strategy rather than courtesy. Oman brings ports on the open Indian Ocean and sovereign capital; Kazakhstan brings grain, meat, minerals and the largest economy in Central Asia.
The trade itself starts small and concrete. Astana wants to sell more grain and meat to the sultanate; in 2025 it shipped honey there for the first time. The two chambers of commerce signed their own memorandum on 5 October, covering agriculture and logistics among other things, and Tokayev — who called Oman a “time-tested and reliable partner” in the Arab world — noted that the two countries mark 35 years of diplomatic relations next year. The corridor is, for now, a proposal without published volumes or a timetable. The investment treaty, the fund and the bank shareholding are signed. That is the right order: build the legal and financial plumbing first, and the cargo has something to move through.
Sources: Oman Observer · The Times of Central Asia · The Astana Times · Trend · Foreign Ministry of Oman · DKNews