AMMAN —
Opposition to the draft bill regulating the investment environment has been
growing since it was sent to the
Lower House for approval last month.
Currently, the House’s Legal Committee is looking into the proposed law but
experts claim that it lacks incentives to attract foreign investors and will not
resolve the bureaucratic problems.
اضافة اعلان
Experts
interviewed by
Jordan News said the proposed draft lacks any inducement
that would encourage entrepreneurial projects and women investors, that some
articles are vague, or even that they may violate the Constitution.
Economist and
industry and investment specialist
Musa Al-Saket told
Jordan News that
the draft law does not live up to expectations and is not up to what the
government was hoping to deliver. He said that an investment law that comes in
these times should boost the outcome of the
Economic Modernization Vision, but
this draft will not achieve the main drivers of the vision, which are to create
a million jobs, attract annual investments worth JD4 billion, and increase
exports.
The vision aims
at boosting economic growth to 5.7 percent annually as a minimum within the
next 10 years.
According to
Saket, one of the main issues investors face is bureaucracy and the lack of
incentives. Yet, “this draft does not contain any incentives nor does it
resolve the challenge of bureaucracy”, he said.
He noted that
abolishing incentives provided to development zones, granted under existing
laws, after seven years will lead to the closure of many entities.
“This is not a
sustainable solution,” Saket said.
“One of the main
issues surrounding this law is that the private sector was not involved in
developing the draft. They were only asked to review it after it was written.
So there is no true partnership between the public and private sectors,” Saket
added.
Director General
of the Jordanian Businessmen Association
Tariq Hijazi told
Jordan News that many committees are to be formed in the proposed draft, which will only
increase red tape, adding that the proposed Investment Council has limited
authority and that there should be an incentives committee that offers packages
that favor projects established outside Amman.
“This committee
should come within the Investment Council, not separate from it, so the
investor is not entangled in red tape,” he said.
Hijazi noted that
the draft bill lacks incentives for entrepreneurial projects and women
ventures, stressing that Jordan lost its position as a haven for entrepreneurs.
“Few Economic
Modernization Vision drivers are included in this new law. There are no
incentives for investments in the draft; the whole law draft should be amended.
This draft does not organize the investment environment at all,” Hijazi said.
Lawmaker
Saleh Al-Armouti told
Jordan News that there is massive opposition to this
draft in the Lower House, for many reasons. For one, it enables foreign
investments to overtake local ones.
“There is no
equality and no protection for national industries; this is bound to reflect
negatively on the national economy,” he said.
Armouti also
pointed to some possible violations of the Constitution in the draft law, such
as giving certain authorities to the minister of investment at the expense of
the governorate councils who are responsible for development areas.
“The ministry
should not hijack the powers of municipalities,” he said.
Economic analyst
Mazen Irsheid told
Jordan News that, unfortunately, this draft bill is
not the kind of law that local or foreign investors aspire to see.
He noted that the
way the bill suggests providing incentives to attract investors is “bizarre”,
since it will be done through a ministerial committee looking into each
investment project and providing specific incentives.
“It should not
work this way. There should not be a ministerial committee that decides the
incentives according to each project; there should be a clear list of
incentives written in the proposed law so there is no vagueness or unfairness,”
Irsheid said.
“This committee
can be unfair, or it could discriminate between investors based on personal
relations. In addition, this committee would be bureaucratic,” he added.
Nonetheless,
Irsheid noted that the daft has few positive points, such as observing equality
between local and foreign investors in terms of incentives offered.
“However, there
is high competition in the region from Egypt, Turkey, and the Gulf, so we
should provide better incentives in order to compete,” he added.
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