AMMAN — The World Bank has said that Jordan “made
progress” in implementing the program supported by the Equitable Growth and Job
Creation
Development Policy Loan (DPL), explaining that it “will continue to
work closely with the government to make progress in the targeted reform
areas”.
اضافة اعلان
According to a
report, the project aims to lay critical foundations for economic growth and
job creation and has become more important in the post-COVID period. The
project was approved on June 4, 2019 with a value of $1.45 billion, Al-Mamlaka
TV reported on Tuesday.
The report also
noted that Jordan has made “the greatest progress in the steady improvement of
the social assistance system”. This has been a key reform during the pandemic
and will likely serve Jordan well in the future.
Jordan made
progress in mobilizing domestic revenues, implementing the new Public
Investment Management Framework, the Public-Private Partnerships Law, and an
investor grievance mechanism.
“Recent progress
has been made on the insolvency, transactions, control, and inspection project,
as well as in implementing the public procurement executive regulations and
offering e-procurement. However, the energy-related results and some of the
results on the private sector environment are lagging and need additional time
to fully implement and impact,” according to the report.
The World Bank
indicated that it was decided during the project evaluation period in 2019, that
Jordan “will need about two and a half years to fully implement the reforms and
complete the results of the DPL series, as this was estimated in the absence of
the coronavirus pandemic, which could not have been expected at the time”.
In the past two
years of the
COVID-19 pandemic, the government has had to address several
health emergencies that have competed with the already difficult reform
program, and to this end, the government needs more time to implement the
agreed reforms and the DPL completion report will be extended by two years,
according to the report.
The second loan
for development policies for equitable growth and job creation aims to reduce
the costs of doing business, attract new investments in priority sectors of the
economy, create more flexible and integrated labor markets, and improve the
sustainability of public finances. The program will also provide better social
assistance to the poor.
The second loan
revolves around three pillars aimed at laying the foundations for enhanced
growth; the first is to reduce the costs of doing business and improve market
access. This pillar will support a set of reforms aimed at making Jordan an
open country for business activities.
These reforms
are expected to support private sector investment, growth, and job creation by
reducing the complexity of regulatory procedures, lowering the costs of doing
business, reducing barriers to market entry and investment, improving access to
finance, and promoting exports.
As for the
second pillar, it is creating more flexible and integrated labor markets and
providing better and more efficient social assistance. This pillar addresses
institutional discrimination against women in the labor market and facilitates
the entry of highly skilled foreign workers to supplement the demand for labor
in the local market.
These reforms are
expected to address urgent problems that affect the performance of the
Jordanian economy including the very low rate of participation of women in the
labor force and the weak demand for labor.
The third pillar focuses
on improving fiscal sustainability and making informed decisions regarding
risks. This pillar will enhance fiscal sustainability through revenue
mobilization, enhance the efficiency of public investments, and improve public
finance risk management. This pillar includes a roadmap to achieve fiscal
sustainability in the public finance sector and the revision of the
Public-Private Partnerships Law.
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