Muscat – Oman has improved its ranking by nine places to 50th in the latest Human Development Index (HDI) released last week by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The 2025 Human Development Report, titled A Matter of Choice: People and Possibilities in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, reveals an unprecedented slowdown in human development progress. It analyses progress across a range of indicators, including health, education and income, which form the basis of the index. Projections for 2024 indicate stalled progress in all regions globally.

Oman is classified among countries with ‘Very high human development’. The sultanate’s HDI now stands at 0.858, up from 0.819 last year. Life expectancy at birth has risen to 80 years from 73.9 years in 2024 and expected years of schooling have increased to 13.4 years from 13 years, while mean years of schooling remain 11.9 years. Gross national income per capita is now US$36,096, up from US$32,967 last year – all key components of HDI.

Among Gulf Cooperation Council states, the UAE leads at 15th place, followed by Saudi Arabia (37th), Bahrain (38th), Qatar (43rd), Oman (50th) and Kuwait (52nd).

Globally, the highest-ranked countries are Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Australia, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, and Belgium. The lowest-ranked are Niger, Chad, the Central African Republic, Somalia and South Sudan.

The report highlights how artificial intelligence could potentially reignite development, but warns of weak progress despite the world moving past the crises of 2020-2021. Excluding these crisis years, the projected increase in global human development for 2025 is the smallest since 1990.

“For decades, we have been on track to reach a very high human development world by 2030, but this deceleration signals a very real threat to global progress,” said Achim Steiner, UNDP Administrator. “If 2024’s sluggish progress becomes ‘the new normal’, the 2030 milestone could slip by decades making our world less secure, more divided, and more vulnerable to economic and ecological shocks.”

The report also highlights growing inequality between countries with ‘Low HDI’ and ‘Very High HDI’ for the fourth consecutive year, reversing a long-term trend of narrowing gaps between wealthy and poor nations.