‘565,000 Jordanians borrowed from banks last year’

AMMAN – The number of Jordanian individuals who borrowed from commercial banks was around 565,000 by the end of last year, according to Adli Kandah, director general of the Association of Banks in Jordan (ABJ). 

Kandah said loans extended by commercial banks to people to purchase residential apartments reached JD2.7 million in 2014, representing around 10.6 per cent of the gross domestic product, a percentage he described as low when compared with other regional countries such as Egypt, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates. 

He attributed the trend to the fact that nearly 73 per cent of Jordanian households own their residences. 

Kandah said the volume of housing loans last year grew by only JD100 million from 2013, but indicated that in 2005, the volume of loans for residential apartments was JD744 million. 

Housing loans increased sharply in a decade, he noted. 

In regards to personal loans, ABJ figures show that a total of 165,000 people borrowed from commercial banks last year at a value of JD1.6 billion, while banks extended loans worth JD445 million to 42,000 people to purchase cars. 

Overall value of loans to individuals, housing, cars and personal, reached JD4.75 billion last year, according to ABJ data. 

Kandah said that 80.8 per cent of borrowers were men, and 19.2 per cent women.

Official figures show that the size of the workforce in the Kingdom is estimated at around 1.6 million, which means that 35 per cent of it sought loans from commercial banks in 2014. 

ABJ data also show that banks issued over 159,000 credit cards to individuals last year.