Monday 10 / March / 2025
Muscat: Muscat: Acting in cooperation with the Ministry of Finance, the Supreme Judiciary Council has announced the reduction and cancellation of existing fees and initiation of new fees in courts, public prosecution departments and notary public sectors.
The step forms part of the third phase of implementation of the government services pricing project.
The Supreme Judicial Council revised a total of 25 fees--of which 14 were reduced, 5 were cancelled and 6 were introduced for the first time.
The review of pricing of judicial and justice services seeks to ensure freedom of litigation, enhance the efficiency of judicial action, ensure high-quality of judicial and justice services rendered to beneficiaries and improve the business environment.
Dr. Majid bin Mubarak Al-Saeedi from the Supreme Judicial Council, said: “The review of the pricing system of the Supreme Judicial Council’s services comes within the Ministry of Finance’s initiatives to adopt a unified and transparent approach in determining fees for government services, and to strike a balance between price, quality of services provided and their competitiveness, in addition to simplifying the procedures for obtaining government services.”
He added that the review resulted in the cancellation of five fees, namely the fee for a judicial enforcement order, the fee for a certificate of a ruling, the fee for a certificate of rehabilitation, the fee for authenticating documents issued by the notary public, and the fee for the notary public’s transportation outside the headquarters for those unable to come to the notary public, such as patients, prison inmates, hospital inmates, widows, the elderly, and persons with disabilities.
He explained that a new system called “slices” has been adopted, which is a simple system based on unifying lawsuit fees between the two levels of initial litigation and appeal, and is based on determining lawsuit fees on the value of the financial claim in the lawsuit. When there are multiple requests, the fee is the result of the total request fees.
The new slice system allows the calculation of fees accurately and transparently and is in line with the new electronic “Qada” portal, as the procedures for calculating the payment of fees are automated electronically based on the requests in the lawsuit.
In addition, the slice system speeds up the litigation process, as it reduces the burden of estimating lawsuit fees for the judges.
He stressed that the new system has significantly reduced the value of lawsuit fees compared to the previous system, ensuring freedom of litigation for small and medium-sized companies, indicating that the review of the Supreme Council’s fees comes within the framework of the Sultanate of Oman’s keenness to raise the indicators of the Omani judiciary globally, improve the business environment and attract investment in order to achieve continuous growth in the business sector, and the need to provide high-quality judicial services in balance with the value and cost of the service.
