The Regional Director of the Mashreq Department (Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria) at the World Bank, Jean-Christophe Carré, stressed the need for Jordan to follow up on reform measures and establish a monitoring system to learn from implementation experience and communicate effectively to progress and achieve results.

He added, in an exclusive statement to the Jordan News Agency (Petra), that Jordan’s reform journey will not be smooth or easy, as it is not like that at all, explaining that there will always be trade-offs between focusing on stability and reform, the continuation of external pressures and the upcoming update of the World Bank’s systematic diagnosis of the country. , an analytical product on how a country can reduce poverty and promote prosperity.

Carré stated that Jordan is in a good position to accelerate the implementation of reform, based on recent successes in responding to crises, in order to generate investment-led growth, create new opportunities for its people, and develop flexible systems to manage future shocks. The vision of economic modernization and its implementation program for the period 2023-2025 provide an important roadmap to apply.

He stressed that with the start of work on developing the World Bank’s new country partnership strategy for the next 5 years for Jordan, the Bank will continue to stand by the Kingdom throughout this journey to achieve success, especially in difficult times.

He explained that while countries around the world face the repercussions of multiple crises, Jordan’s experience offers lessons in resilience and maintaining stability in the midst of turbulence over the past two decades, indicating that the Jordanian economy has survived regional conflicts and pioneered a progressive and development-oriented response model for refugees. He overcame the Corona pandemic crisis and the shocks of rising global commodity prices with adaptive policies.

The World Bank official added that despite the difficult global environment, Jordan’s growth accelerated in the first nine months of 2022 to 2.7 percent, driven by a strong recovery in the tourism sector, full reopening of the economy, and improvement in exports, and inflation rates were contained in Jordan, compared to its peers. in the area.

He pointed out that the response to the multiple crises in Jordan led to an increase in Jordan’s debt burden to high levels, and it was able to manage its debt successfully by building investor confidence, accessing global financial markets, and enhancing the mobilization of local revenues. High facilitation in external borrowing and reliable domestic financing.

These responses showed the Kingdom’s flexibility and ability to maintain stability in the face of crises, explaining that the Kingdom now has the opportunity to turn its attention to completing structural reforms to achieve comprehensive and sustainable growth based on investment and job creation, especially for youth and women, according to the Regional Director of the Levant Department.

Carré elaborated on the Kingdom’s economic reform journey through Jordan’s Vision 2025, the reform matrix in Jordan, and the vision of economic modernization that determined the course of the country’s reform journey, explaining that Jordan took important and difficult initial steps, such as its reform and expansion of its social protection system, which provides Well-targeted support for the most vulnerable families and workers The innovative design, which takes advantage of digital technologies, has overcome many of the access challenges faced during the COVID-19 pandemic and has become a recognized model in the region.

He went on to say: “The country is also pushing decisive policies and legislation that will help boost investment and improve labor market outcomes, including for women, as Jordan has been the first mover in placing climate action at the heart of the country’s development model and is taking major steps to enhance efficiency, flexibility and financial sustainability in the energy and water sectors.

He stressed that Jordan is making progress in transparency and open data, which are at the core of good governance and evidence-based decision-making, and this was finally recognized by the Open Data Inventory (ODIN), which measures the statistical presentations of countries and the openness of data, so between 2020 and 2022 it jumped Jordan moved from 82nd to 37th place in the ODIN world rankings. The Jordanian state also implemented a reform in the public procurement system and introduced the Electronic Procurement System (JONEPS) to enhance efficiency and transparency.