The World Bank has approved a new financing of $112 million to support the Jordan Support Project to Stimulate Employment and Skills Acquisition in the Private Sector.

The bank stated that this program was designed to support the government’s efforts to motivate the private sector to provide job opportunities to employ Jordanians, raise the level of training them on the skills required to work in this sector, in addition to reducing high unemployment rates, especially among youth and women.

The “National Employment Program” comes in Jordan’s economic priorities plan for the years 2021-2023, which the government is preparing to launch with funding from the World Bank, as it aims to help the private sector in the Kingdom to provide sustainable jobs, explaining that many companies have begun to recover from the initial repercussions of the Corona pandemic. .

The Minister of Planning and International Cooperation, Nasser Al-Shraideh, said that this program is one of the most important pillars of the government’s priorities program for the years 2021-2023, and is added to the economic stimulus packages approved by the government to support the national economy during the pandemic period, and it was designed in full partnership with representatives of the private sector, and the Simplifying its implementation mechanism to enable the private sector to create the largest number of job opportunities, and with the least possible government intervention, as private sector companies will be the most important players in this program.

In turn, Minister of Labor Nayef Stitieh confirmed that the financing of the World Bank will help launch the National Employment Program in early 2022 to help recover from the Corona pandemic, by providing job opportunities led by the private sector targeting youth and women, who are in dire need of job opportunities. .

The “National Employment Program” aims to enable more than 2,000 private sector companies to employ and train more than 63,000 new employees, a third of whom are women, and half of them are young people between the ages of 18 and 24.

The program plans to do this by providing a combination of government subsidies for wages, social security, and transportation, as well as structured on-the-job and classroom training.

The World Bank’s Regional Director of the Mashreq Department, Saroj Kumar Jha, confirmed that the Bank is assisting in its efforts to respond to the Corona pandemic, including the new “National Employment Program”, and helping to promote private sector-led investment growth and provide job opportunities for effective and resilient recovery.

The World Bank’s Strategic Partnership Framework for Jordan 2017-2022 highlights the need for stronger private sector-led growth and better job opportunities for all.

The new employment program in Jordan is in line with the World Bank Group’s strategy on gender equality for the years 2016-2023, as well as with the Jordan Action Plan for the Economic Empowerment of Jordanian Women, and also with its National Strategy for Women for the years 2020-2025.