World Bank approves $85mln for Jordan’s Industry Development Fund to promote investments, exports

World Bank approves $85mln for Jordan’s Industry Development Fund to promote investments, exports

Jordan urgently needs to create inclusive and broad-based job opportunities to promote resilient recovery from the COVID-19 crisis, requiring a shift towards a resource-efficient, export- and investment-driven growth model, read the statement.

Manufacturing, among the largest employers in Jordan’s economy, suffered acute shortages of cash during the COVID-19 pandemic. To diversify and expand their exports, and generate more jobs, companies now need to move out of survival mode to a new level of competitiveness, the statement said.

The Government of Jordan is establishing the Industry Development Fund to put its development policies and programmes on manufacturing into practice. The government asked for the World Bank’s support in designing and operationalising the fund as “an efficient, transparent, and effective delivery platform for support for firms, and as a key financial enabler for industrial transformation”.

Its focus will be upgrading and modernising industries; export development and promotion; and incentivising companies towards high performance in areas critical to the sector reaching its full potential, such as increased climate-responsiveness and female employment.

"The Industry Development Fund is a key instrument in our Economic Priority Plan 2021–2023 to help firms in the industrial sector recover and build back better following the COVID-19 crisis,” Minister of Planning and International Cooperation