'77% of investors view environment as unfavourable' — survey

AMMAN — The Jordan Strategy Forum (JSF) released survey findings on Tuesday showing that 21 per cent of investors in the Kingdom view the investment environment as encouraging, while 77 per cent said it is not.

The JSF survey on investor confidence showed that 24.4 per cent of investors see current economic conditions in Jordan as on the right track, while 65.1 per cent said otherwise, according to a JSF statement.

Among those who said that economic conditions were on the wrong track, 30 per cent attributed their decision to difficult economic circumstances, 25 per cent to high customs fees, taxes and interest rates and 17 per cent to policy instability and complicated laws and by-laws.

The survey, which was conducted in February, interviewed 581 investors. These included 356 investors in the services sector, 116 in the industrial, 73 in the commercial and 36 in the agricultural sectors, according to the JSF website.

The survey showed a 79 per cent of investors said that economic conditions in 2018 were worse than in 2017.

Regarding their expectations for the future, 29 per cent of investors expected conditions in the next 12 months to be better, while half of investors said it would be worse.

Investors who said that the current investment environment is not encouraging cited high prices, taxes, customs, economic conditions, lack of workforce and corruption.

As for their expectations on the volume of economic transactions, 33 per cent of investors said they thought that volume would increase over the next 12 months, 20 per cent anticipated it to remain unchanged and 39 per cent expected it to decline.

The survey showed that the percentage of investors who expanded their businesses in 2018 fell to 18 per cent, compared with 26 per cent in 2017. Forty per cent of investors also made cuts in their businesses in 2018, an increase from 24 per cent in 2017.

On a sector basis, 22 per cent of investors in the agricultural sector, 19 per cent in the industrial, 17 per cent in the services and 15 per cent in the commercial sectors said that they had expanded their investments.

The 40 per cent of investors who had made cuts to their businesses attributed their decisions to high tax rates, fees, customs and operational costs, as well as an economic recession, weak purchasing power and low demand.