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AMMAN — The Economic Modernisation Vision (EMV) workshops continued on Sunday at the Royal Hashemite Court with a focus on the investment sector, highlighting its role in driving sustainable economic growth and job creation, especially for youth.
The workshop brought together representatives from government institutions, the private sector and civil society to review the progress achieved in the investment sector and identify priorities for the next phase of the EMV.
The investment engine is a “strategic and pivotal” pillar in supporting and achieving the objectives of the EMV by focusing its efforts on attracting local and foreign investments, improving the business environment and developing policies to accelerate the pace of benefiting from investments.
It also contributes to creating an attractive investment environment in the Kingdom, which stimulates economic growth and opens wider horizons for providing job opportunities and developing productive sectors.
Participants discussed Jordan’s advantages, including its strategic geographical location as a gateway between Europe, Asia and Africa, bilateral investment agreements and free trade agreements (FTAs) with major markets such as the EU, the US, Arab Gulf states, Agadir and Singapore.
They also pointed to providing competitive incentives in development zones, free zones, and special economic zones, as well as promising sectors with significant investment potential, such as digital economy, green hydrogen, logistics, gas, mining, industry and life sciences.
The strengths of Jordan is also represented in the political stability that encourages investment, and having a young, educated, and tech-savvy workforce, in addition to enjoying the freedom to transfer capital and withdraw profits, especially that the Jordanian dinar is pegged to the US dollar.
Key goals of the EMV include attracting investments worth JD41 billion (JD18 billion foreign direct investments, JD12 billion of domestic direct investment, and JD11 billion of government direct investment) by 2033.
Other objectives are related to creating economic and employment opportunities to absorb more than one million young men and women in the labour market, and supporting development goals.
The EMV also outlines efforts to support establishing Jordan's position as a regional centre of excellence for effective and sustainable investment, as well as enhancing Jordan's competitiveness in attracting foreign direct investment in priority sectors, such as ICT, green energy, pharmaceutical industries, tourism and logistics.
The most prominent initiatives of the investment engine in the first phase include improving Jordan's rank in international indicators and reports, creating and developing new and innovative financing partnership models with the private sector, improving the investment environment in the Kingdom and developing its components.
More initiatives pertain to development of an effective strategy to communicate with local and international investors, and launch an integrated promotional campaign programme, attracting and stimulating local and foreign investments, developing a comprehensive investor database, and establishing a system for managing integrated investor relations.
Most prominent achievements for the investment engine for the first phase include boosting the legislative and regulatory framework that attracts investment, developing digital infrastructure and improving government services for investors, and effective promotion of quality investment opportunities.
More achievements include improving investor experience and enhance post-establishment services, and boosting local and regional partnerships to implement quality projects, providing incentives and reducing investment costs, in addition to financial stimulus and revitalisation of international cooperation.
Despite this progress, attendees of the workshop noted that challenges remain.
Partner and General Manager of Abu-Haltam Group for Investments Iyad Abu Haltam said that the EMV has more than 350 initiatives throughout its 10-year span, noting that the progress rate in the implementation over the past three years varies between different sectors.
He added: “The progress in some sectors was less than 30 per cent, some achieved around 60 per cent, while others made a progress of 10 to 15 per cent.”
The main reasons behind slow progress can be attributed to the turbulence in the region including the war on Gaza and the turbulence in the supply chain through Bab Al Mandeb Strait, Abu Haltam noted.
He pointed: "We should have a proper and structured way of the dialogue between the private and the public sectors regarding any newly introduced laws or bylaws."
Managing Partner of SME Investment Fund Jameel Anz said in terms of challenges: "The entire domain is challenged by a lot of factors, whether it's financing, access to finance, access to capital, access to resources, the geopolitical environment."
Anz added: "SMEs do face, but sometimes at a larger scale, a higher tendency to break because of their size. At the same time, SMEs do face a challenge when it comes to corporate governance because all of these companies are friends and family based, so corporate governance is an issue."
He said: "Sustainability and continuity of the companies is also an issue. So part of helping promote and sustain these companies is to help them with access to finance, help them with capacity building, moving them out of the friends and family [atmosphere] into a more corporate structure."
"Solutions for SMEs are capacity building. Access to finance and corporate governance are others." Anz noted.
