AMMAN —
Head of the
Amman Chamber of Industry (ACI) Fathi Jaghbir said the ACI will
focus during the next stage on increasing the share of Jordanian industrial
products in global markets, especially at non-traditional destinations,
stressing that “this goal will be a top priority”, the Jordan News Agency,
Petra, reported.
اضافة اعلان
Jaghbir said that
future marketing efforts will focus on European, Latin American, and East Asian
markets, in order to achieve geographical diversification for Jordanian
industrial products and reduce its industry’s reliance on traditional markets.
The ACI’s Board of
Directors will work on a common mission to help the sector face challenges and
team up with various stakeholders to overcome obstacles facing manufacturers’
operations, he said.
He added that the
chamber will seek to enhance the industrial sector’s competitiveness and raise
employment rates through a comprehensive strategy aimed at advancing industrial
development and improving the business environment through action plans that
are consistent with the objectives of the
Economic Modernization Vision.
Steps will be taken
in the next stage to reduce production costs, protect the national product,
increase and diversify exports and destinations, expand the manpower and
operating rates, provide financing and grants, and empower chambers of
industry, he said.
However, “despite
the great and distinguished contributions made by the industrial sector, it has
not yet reached its full potential, whether in terms of production or export,”
Jaghbir said, stressing that failure to “fully” unleash the industrial sector’s
production and export potentials is mainly due to the “relatively high”
production costs, compared to that in neighboring countries.
This figure is the highest in the past decade, with the sector’s contribution to GDP exceeding 29.5 percent.
“Key” obstacles, he
reiterated, are production costs, especially those of energy, labor, and fees
and taxes, which hinder Jordanian industry’s potential to advance, grow, and prosper.
ACI will work to
tackle the outstanding issues facing the industrial sector regarding, he said,
adding that the chamber will work “hard” to activate and implement the
principle of reciprocity, and take administrative measures regarding imports of
foreign goods, which are “growing dramatically and threatening Jordanian
industrial products”, by imposing procedures, mainly product registration, to
limit their entry into the Kingdom.
Since the beginning
of 2022, Jaghbir said, the Jordanian industry has recorded an “unprecedented”
performance and grew by 3.8 percent over the same period last year, when
exports amounted to about JD3 billion.
“This figure is the
highest in the past decade, with the sector’s contribution to GDP exceeding
29.5 percent,” said Jaghbir, stressing that Jordan’s industrial sector is a
great contributor to economic growth.
The industrial
sector, he said, is key to the economy; it attracted more than 65 percent of
the investments that stood to benefit from the Investment Promotion Law over
the past two decades.
Industrial sector
investments until the end of 2021 amounted to about $15 billion, in 17,000
establishments; they employ 256,000 workers, or 25 percent of the Kingdom’s
total workforce, he said.
In the coming 10
years, the Economic Modernization Vision aims to increase the contribution of
industrial exports to the growth rates of the national economy by 35 to 65
percent, to bring it to about JD20 billion in 2033, he noted.
The plan is to raise the industrial sector’s contribution to
the GDP from JD5.3 billion last year to JD11.1 billion in 2033, in addition to
creating more than 260,000 new jobs over the next 10 years, he added.
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