AMMAN — According
to the quarterly report released Sunday by the
Department of Statistics, the
GDP grew by 2.2 percent in 2021, and GDP, at constant market prices,
climbed by 2.6 percent in the fourth quarter of last year, compared to the fourth
quarter of 2020.
اضافة اعلان
While this
growth is considered normal by analysts, the economic growth for this year remains
a concern.
"This
economic growth number was expected, but it is not good enough," economic expert Mazen
Irsheid told
Jordan News, explaining that in 2021 “life resumed its normal
flow, and economic sectors reopened, albeit late, at the beginning of September”.
Irsheid said
that the growth of the
GDP in Jordan is normal, “but when compared to the years
before the epidemic, i.e., 2019, the percentage appears low, implying that the
economy and the GDP are not yet back to where they were before the pandemic”.
No wonder,
considering that 2020 “saw an increase in unemployment, poverty, indebtedness,
and severe economic deterioration”.
In terms of
economic growth expectations for this year, Irsheid said that the effects of the
pandemic are still present, and that the
Russian-Ukrainian war will have
negative economic repercussions on the Jordanian economy because the Kingdom
imports more than 85 percent of its basic needs and more than 93 percent of its
energy from abroad.
"Unfortunately,
I do not predict a growth of more than 2.2 percent of GDP, because inflation is
expected to climb even higher in Jordan as a result of its heavy reliance on
imports, particularly of basic supplies," which, since the start of the
Russian war in Ukraine, in late February, have gone up, Irsheid said.
According to economist
Wajdi Makhamreh, the GDP growth figure for 2021 is normal, since in 2020 government restrictions contributed to the decline of the
Jordanian economy.
Later measures
that helped reduce the spread of the virus “directly contributed to improving
the domestic product's growth”.
According to
Makhamreh, the IMF and the government economic growth projections for Jordan
were higher, of between 2.8 percent and 3 percent, but they “were not met since
the growth of several sectors, such as tourism and transportation, was slower
than planned”.
Despite
Jordan's inflation and the implications of the Russian-Ukrainian war, Makharmeh
believes that economic growth might reach 2.8 percent this year.
According to
him, the efforts of the tourism sector this summer will make a significant
difference, “with favorable results appearing in the second half of this year”.
But for Zayan
Zawaneh, a political economist, any statistical comparison with 2020 is flawed,
as in view of “Jordan's and the world's big crisis, the data for 2020 is
exceptional and not accurate enough to be used as a reference and indicator for
later years”.
Zawaneh said
that 2.2 percent GDP growth rate is decent, but this number has been consistent
for several years, “with
GDP growth ranging between 1.8 and 2.3 percent in the
previous eight years”.
This growth, he
added, “does not alleviate Jordan's problems, does not create
job opportunities,
is smaller than the population growth projection, and indicates that there is a
problem that has worsened over the last years that the government has not
addressed”.
The 2021 rate
of GDP growth may be considered good by some, Zawaneh said, but it is a small
percentage that is unable to solve or even address the country's economic
problems.
“Jordan's
internal problems, in addition to global problems, such as the
Russian-Ukrainian war, high rates of inflation, high prices of basic materials,
high prices of production inputs, and high energy prices, will all contribute
to, maybe, reaching an economic growth level equal to last year or less,” he
said, adding that "the matter begins with the current rise in energy
prices, and then we will find ourselves in a crisis at the level of the family
budget, and subsequently the government budget".
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