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ATHENS – Greece's prime minister vowed Saturday not to back down in his "battle" with the country's creditors, in line with his election promise to abandon austerity and avoid a third bailout.

"The battle will continue," Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras told the central committee of his hard-left Syriza Party. "Anybody thinking that we are going to go away will be disappointed."

Tsipras said that in the talks that landed Greece a four-month extension to its 240 billion euro [$270 billion] bailout Tuesday, the pressure from other European countries "had the character of blackmail".

"Conservative forces [in Europe] tried to set a trap for us, to drive us into budgetary asphyxia," the 40-year-old said. "We will not retreat from the difficulties or from our own principles."

Syriza swept to power in January on a promise to ease the hardship caused by past government spending cuts imposed in return for the eurozone country's two bailouts in 2010 and 2012.

Tsipras reiterated Friday that once the current bailout expires on June 30 there would be no "third memorandum" as the previous agreements tying aid to spending cuts are known.

"Memorandums are finished," he said.

Is it unclear however whether Tsipras can avoid another rescue package.

His self-declared "government of social salvation" faces a major challenge in keeping both voters and Greece's international creditors happy by providing relief for the poor while also keeping government spending in check.

Thursday saw the first protests in Athens since the bailout extension, with several hundred anti-capitalists and anarchists taking to the streets, some smashing shop windows and setting fire to rubbish bins.

Greece must also repay billions of euros in debt in the coming months.

Tsipras has said he wants to renegotiate the country's 320 billion euro debt pile, despite fierce opposition, particularly in Germany, to any new debt "haircut".

Meanwhile, Greece's nascent recovery from six straight years of recession also looks in trouble, with official data on Friday showing a contraction of 0.4 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2014.

Initial estimates had forecast a 0.2 per cent drop in gross domestic product. 

After winning four months of breathing space from its creditors, the government now has until the end of April to provide them with more details of its reform programme in order to receive the final bailout tranche.

A list of reforms submitted by Athens this week, which focused on tackling tax evasion and excessive bureaucracy, was described by German Chancellor Angela Merkel as just a "starting point".

Germany's parliament nonetheless overwhelmingly approved the bailout extension Friday, despite a minor rebellion by members of Merkel's party, surveys suggesting German voter unease and the country's Bild daily saying "greedy" Greece should get no more money.

On Saturday, Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's maverick new finance minister, promised "no pity" in tackling tax evasion and said that the government might impose a one-off levy on the rich to help fill government coffers.

"What interests us is those who have money but who have never paid [tax]. They are our target and we will show no pity," Varoufakis told the TV channel Skai.

Varoufakis assured such a levy would "only be for those who can pay".

We are not going to take money off people who are suffering," he said.

Tsipras said Friday the government would table legislation early next week aimed at alleviating poverty and putting the country of 11 million on a more equitable road to recovery.

AMMAN – President of the Amman Chamber of Commerce (ACC) is preparing studies for investment opportunities in Jordan to be presented to Saudi investors in the coming months, ACC President Issa Murad said on Saturday. 

The studies will be ready to be offered during the meetings of the joint Jordanian-Saudi business council that will be held in coming few months, according to an ACC statement e-mailed to The Jordan Times. 

At a meeting with Saudi Arabia Ambassador to Jordan Sami Al Saleh, the ACC chairman said the private sector in Jordan is keen to boost economic and investment ties between the two countries and to attract more investments from the Gulf kingdom. 

He said the chamber is ready to follow up on difficulties facing investors from Saudi Arabia, adding that ACC is also working on organising a meeting for businesspeople from both countries to discuss obstacles and problems encountering investors in Jordan. 

The Saudi diplomat talked about renovation work of the Saudi-funded Azraq-Omari highway, which links Jordan with Saudi Arabia, adding that 18 per cent of rehabilitation works have been achieved so far. Saleh noted that there are 7,800 Saudi students in Jordan. 

According to ACC, Jordan's exports to Saudi Arabia in the first 11 months of 2014 reached JD645 million, while imports from the oil-rich country were over JD2 billion. 

BEIJING – General Motors (GM) is to stop making cars in Indonesia, a battleground for global automakers in emerging Southeast Asia, closing an assembly plant, axing some 500 jobs and shifting its branding focus to sport utility vehicles (SUVs).

The US auto giant, which was the first to set up a car assembly plant in Southeast Asia's biggest economy eight decades ago, is effectively calling time on its attempt to wrestle market share from dominant Japanese rivals, led by Toyota Motor .

GM Executive Vice President Stefan Jacoby, who oversees markets beyond the Americas, Europe and China, acknowledges GM got it wrong in going head-to-head with the Japanese in a market he dubs their "backyard".

GM tried to take on Japanese rivals by locally producing its Chevrolet Spin, a strategic, small “people mover” van which has proved a winner in Brazil, but it was too costly to make to be profitable in Indonesia as most of the parts had to be imported.

The Spin, which sold from around $12,000 and competed with Toyota's Avanza, failed to take off as GM had hoped, making the production plant at Bekasi, just outside Jakarta, a financial burden. Production last year was less than a quarter of Bekasi's annual capacity of 40,000 vehicles. GM sold just 8,412 Spin cars in Indonesia last year, and exported nearly 3,000.

"We could not ramp up Spin production to boost the volume as we had expected... although the product was really good," Jacoby told Reuters. "The logistics chain of the Spin was too complex; we had low volume so we could not localise the car accordingly, and from the cost point of view we were just not competitive."

GM will stop making the Spin in Indonesia by end-June and shutter the Bekasi factory, which employs around 500 people. The restructuring will leave GM Indonesia as only a sales unit.

The overhaul aims to turn GM Indonesia "not only into profitability, but into a sustainable business model", said Jacoby.

The move — part of a broader repositioning of the Chevrolet brand across Southeast Asia, emphasising its American heritage for SUVs like the Captiva and Trailblazer —comes even as GM drives into Indonesia with its Chinese partner SAIC Motor Corp .

The partners plan to set up a manufacturing facility near Jakarta for their no-frills Wuling brand — but aren't interested in taking over the Bekasi plant, said a person close to the joint venture.

GM's decision to dial back its solo presence in a market of 240 million people, where fewer than four in every 100 own a car, comes as global automakers retool their strategies for the world's big emerging markets, including Russia and India.

Despite its long presence in Indonesia, GM sold fewer than 11,000 vehicles there last year, giving it a market share of below 1 per cent, according to LMC Automotive. By contrast, Toyota and its Daihatsu affiliate shifted more than 578,000 vehicles. Toyota and other Japanese makers together control more than 90 per cent of the market.

GM Indonesia chief Michael Dunne is expected to leave his post within days, and will be replaced on an interim basis by Pranav Bhatt, chief financial officer for GM Indonesia. Dunne and Bhatt were not immediately available to comment.

Athens – Fresh tensions emerged Thursday between Greece and Germany as attention turned to Athens's huge debt pile two days after the stricken eurozone country secured an extension of its bailout. 

Greece, whose economy has shrunk by a quarter in six years, owes 320 billion euros ($365 billion), equal to 175 per cent of its annual economic output.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, who swept to power last month on a wave of anger at years of austerity cuts, wants to use a four-month bailout extension secured on Tuesday to renegotiate this debt mountain.

Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, the frank-talking economics professor hired by Tsipras to reach a better deal with Greece's creditors, called Wednesday to "begin immediately" a discussion on this.

But with Greece having already secured a 100-billion-euro write-down of its debt to private creditors and two bailouts of 240 billion euros, German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble expressed Thursday his "disbelief" at any such suggestion.

"I can't see anything in what Varoufakis is doing that makes life easier for us," the veteran German minister was quoted as telling a parliamentary group meeting.

"No more billions for the greedy Greeks!" screamed mass daily Bild Thursday under a huge "Nein!" ("No!") headline.

Green shoots  

The extension to Greece's lifeline still needs approval from the German parliament and possibly Greece's, but this should be a formality despite unease among some lawmakers in both countries.

To secure the lifeline, Tsipras's new hard-left government published a six-page list of proposed reforms focused on boosting tax receipts and cutting spending through improved efficiencies.

But Tsipras, 40, had to temper campaign promises to hike the minimum wage, reinstate laid-off civil servants and alleviate poverty by vowing that this would be done only in consultation with Greece's creditors.

Varoufakis, meanwhile, told Bloomberg TV in an interview that 700 million euros was deposited at Greek banks on Tuesday.

That is a fraction of the 20 billion euros withdrawn in panic when elections were called and Greece lurched into a new crisis in December, but Varoufakis said this showed confidence was returning.

"There was a deposit flight back into the Greek banking sector," the fluent English-speaker told Bloomberg. "It's a question of direction. Once you turn the tide, you hope."

Doubts in Deutschland 

But Greece, which has been in almost constant crisis mode since 2010 fighting to stay in the single currency zone, is by no means out of the woods.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Wednesday that the extension was just a "starting point" and that Berlin was under "no illusions" about the challenges ahead.

Schaeuble went further, saying that there was a "lot of doubt in Germany" about whether Athens will stick to the commitments.

"The question now is whether one can believe the assurances of the Greek government or not," Schaeuble said.

According to a survey published on Wednesday, only 21 per cent of Germans are in favour of extending the bailout.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Central Bank, which together with the eurozone states hold most of Greece's debts, have also expressed misgivings.

Over the coming four months Greece needs to firm up its reform plans and show by the end of April that they are bearing fruit before receiving a final bailout disbursement of 7.2 billion euros.

In the meantime Greece has to repay several billion euros' worth of maturing debts, including some two billion euros to the IMF in March and April and 6.7 billion euros in ECB bonds maturing in July and August.

In 2015, Greece has to pay back around 19 billion euros.

"We are going to have problems repaying IMF debts and the ECB in July," Varoufakis told Alpha Radio, denying however that this would give the government liquidity problems.

In the Bloomberg interview, Varoufakis suggested that the ECB could settle Greece's debts with the IMF using around two billion euros in bond profits that he said was owed to Athens.

"This is money we are owed," he said. "I find it very hard to imagine that Europe and the IMF will allow us to trip over what is a relatively small cash problem."

AMMAN – Amman-based Hikma Pharmaceuticals announced Wednesday the signing of an exclusive licence agreement with specialty pharmaceutical company Azanta A/S for its proprietary cancer product Nimoral (nimorazole). According to a company statement, Nimoral is a hypoxic radiosensitiser to enhance the effect of radiotherapy in head and neck cancer patients. The product is currently in Phase 3 clinical development and is being made available under named patient programmes throughout the world. Under the terms of the agreement, Hikma will have the exclusive rights to register, manufacture, distribute and market Nimoral in 20 markets in the MENA region including Turkey, leveraging Hikma’s strong local presence and regulatory expertise, with over 1,800 sales and marketing reps across the region.  

AMMAN – Jordan's overall exports rose by 6 per cent in 2014 to reach JD5.9 billion compared to JD5.6 billion in 2013, official data showed Wednesday. 

According to the foreign trade report released by the Department of Statistics (DoS), national exports were JD5.1 billion, while re-exports stood at JD790 million last year.

DoS report indicated that imports went up by 3.1 per cent to JD16.1 billion last year from JD15.6 billion in 2013. 

Kingdom’s trade deficit, the value imports exceeding those of exports, increased by 1.4 per cent last year to JD10.19 billion compared to JD10.04 billion the year before. 

According to DoS, the coverage ratio of total exports to imports has increased to 36.9 per cent from 35.9 per cent in 2013. 

Garments, fruits, vegetables, potash, fertilisers and crude phosphate were among the main products that increased in value last year, while pharmaceutical exports saw a drop in volume. 

The DoS report showed that exports to Greater Arab Free Trade Area countries went up by 3.3 per cent and to non-Arab Asian countries by 12.8 per cent, USA by 9.7 per cent and EU by 26.3 per cent. 

Imports from Arab countries and non-Arab Asian countries also increased by 1.3 per cent and 9 per cent respectively, while imports from the EU went down by 6.4 per cent and the US by 3.3 per cent.

AMMAN — US investments in Jordan stand at $2.2 billion, constituting 8 per cent of the entire investments in Jordan which reached around $28 billion by the end of 2014, Amman Chamber of Commerce (ACC) President Issa Murad said Wednesday. 

At a workshop organised by the ACC, attended by US Ambassador to Jordan Alice G. Wells, Murad described the free trade agreement between Jordan and the US as a “success story” that benefited both countries.

The US is one of the most important commercial partners to Jordan, particularly that the trade exchange between the two countries has recently increased by over sixfold, Murad said, according to a statement e-mailed to The Jordan Times.

The ACC president said that Jordan was the first country in the region to sign the Qualified Industrial Zones agreement in 1997, under which Jordanian products reached the US markets without custom fees and quantity restrictions. 

After 2010, Murad added, most Jordanian goods became exempted from custom fees and quantity restrictions thanks to the Free Trade Agreement with the US which was signed in 2000. 

Industry, Trade and Supply Ministry Secretary General Maha Ali said that US-Jordanian commercial ties developed during the past few years, with national exports to the US in 2014 reaching $1.3 billion. 

Regarding the joint commercial and economic relations, Wells noted that the US-Jordanian trade exchange volume in 2014 reached $3.2 billion.

She also said that the Jordanian ICT sector’s exports to the US stand at $70 million, constituting 20 per cent of the Kingdom’s production in this sector.

AMMAN — Airport International Group (AIG), the Jordanian company responsible for the rehabilitation, expansion and operation of Queen Alia International Airport (QAIA) , announced on Monday in a press statement that QAIA has topped the categories of “Best Airport by Region: Middle East” and “Best Improvement by Region: Middle East” in the 2014 Airport Service Quality (ASQ) Survey, the world’s leading airport passenger satisfaction benchmark programme.

According to the survey, published by global trade representative of airports, Airports Council International (ACI), QAIA has registered unprecedented improvements in all 36 listed services and facilities in both categories.

The ASQ Survey is the world’s leading airport passenger satisfaction benchmark programme, and covers over 300 airports in more than 50 countries worldwide, with over 550,000 passengers interviewed in 2014 alone. 

AMMAN – A team from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is carrying out a two-week review of Jordanian economic reforms.

The IMF executives are scheduled to meet with officials at  the Ministry of Finance, Central Bank of Jordan and other government institutions to discuss the Kingdom’s economic performance under the sixth review of a three-year programme supported by a stand-by-agreement, according to Finance Ministry Secretary General Ezeddin Kanakriyeh.

He noted that despite the challenges, the Kingdom’s reforms have “greatly” contributed to improving most economic and financial indicators in a way that helped achieving financial and monetary stability. 

AMMAN — A delegation representing the Union of Bilateral Chambers of Commerce from Romania on Tuesday visited the Muwaqqar Industrial Estate and had a first-hand look on investment opportunities in the Kingdom.

The delegation, headed by the union’s President Nasty Vladoiu, was briefed on the Jordanian experience in industrial estates, considering that the Jordan Industrial Estates Corporation (JIEC) attracted more than 745 projects until the end of 2014.

JIEC Chief Executive Ali Madadha called on Romanian investors and businessmen to establish projects in industrial estates affiliated with JIEC and to benefit from incentives and exemptions the corporation offers to Arab and foreign investors.

Vladoiu described the delegation’s visit, which was planned in coordination with the Jordanian Businessmen Association, as another step forward in the Romanian-Jordanian relations which started 50 years ago, stressing the union’s endeavours to further boost these ties.