Wednesday 11 / February / 2026
Muscat: The Fifth Conference of the Regional Network of Central Banks began in Muscat on Wednesday. The two-day event is hosted by the Central Bank of Oman (CBO), in cooperation with the Office of the Chief Economist for the Middle East, North Africa, Afghanistan and Pakistan at the World Bank Group.
The conference aims to strengthen the role of research in supporting decision- making and the formulation and implementation of economic and financial policies, as well as deepening dialogue on the development challenges and opportunities facing the region’s economies.
The conference also serves as an annual platform that brings together a distinguished group of researchers and academics to exchange expertise on regional and international economic and political developments, with the objective of enhancing the research and analytical capacities of professionals working in monetary and financial institutions across the region.
A range of important economic research topics will be discussed throughout the conference sessions, in addition to training workshops designed to leverage participants’ expertise in building research capacity for specialised researchers in the Sultanate of Oman and the wider region. This is expected to contribute to improving the quality of research output within institutions involved in the formulation and implementation of economic and financial policies.
This research gathering brings together a group of leading economists specialising in economic reform policies, economic transformation and mechanisms for addressing emerging technological developments. Over the two days of the conference, fifteen papers selected through an international competitive research process will be presented. These papers focus primarily on resilience and economic reform in times of uncertainty, the redesign of fiscal and monetary policies and economic transformation in the region.
They also emphasise rapid technological developments, including artificial intelligence, financial technologies and big data analytics, and their role in reshaping macroeconomic strategies, financial systems, and structural reform pathways. In addition, discussions will attempt to explore the most effective ways to build more resilient economies capable of confronting persistent structural challenges such as dependence on oil, high unemployment rates and the limited contribution of the private sector to economic growth.
On the sidelines of the conference, training workshops will be held to build research capacities and skills among researchers from Oman and the region, and to strengthen the research agenda in line with best practices. A number of participating economists will be invited to deliver three workshops focusing on the use of non-traditional data in macroeconomic research, the application of machine learning in economic policy studies and natural language processing in economic texts.
