AMMAN — The
Economic and Social Council’s fourth annual “State of the country report, 2021”,
published on May 22, reviewed the performance of 21 government sectors and
issued recommendations that may help improve their work and address weaknesses
inherent in some.
اضافة اعلان
The report, which
found that the economic and social effects of the pandemic continue to inform
government policies and legislation, that the competitiveness of the
national economy continues to decline, that there is inefficient use of available
economic resources, obstacles to the entry of foreign investments, and high
energy costs, issued a set of recommendations to address the shortcomings and
stimulate economic growth.
Economist Salameh
Aldarawi told
Jordan News that the Economic and Social Council report
“is a great effort”, and that “it gives a realistic diagnosis of the actual
situation in which many sectors are”.
Still, he believes
that the “report will be handed over to the government, just like the rest of
the previous reports, and most likely its recommendations will be put on the
shelf”.
He said that “the
government does not take the recommendations of these qualitative reports”
seriously, “despite their importance to the decision makers”.
His advice to the council was to conduct
a “detailed sectoral research, instead of the comprehensive nature” of the
report now.
According to Yusuf
Mansur, CEO of
Envision Consulting Group and former minister of state for
economic affairs, “the report should come up with practical and actionable
solutions”, instead of mentioning “the negatives, the problems, and the
regress, which are all well-known” anyway.
Moreover, Mansur
believes that the report “did not come with new recommendations, most of the
report’s outcomes were old”.
According to
Mansur, description of the situation in such a report should constitute only 20
percent, and 80 percent should be solutions and recommendations.
Amer Shobaki, an
economist and specialist in oil and energy affairs, told
Jordan News that “the demands and recommendations of the 2021 report are the same with
those in previous reports”, adding that successive governments failed to
address or solve problems and challenges.
“We need decisive,
real, and balanced decisions by the government to tackle these challenges,”
said Shobaki who contributed to this year’s report.
Firas Balasmeh,
energy expert and CEO of FB Group, said that “the report is very helpful in
addressing the energy sector”, adding that it has a lot of information,
highlights problems and gives solutions.
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