Central Bank expects foreign investment to grow by 12% this year

AMMAN — The Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ) on Tuesday expected the net direct foreign investments in the Kingdom to grow in 2018 by 12 per cent to JD1.380 billion.

In a report, carried by the Jordan News Agency, Petra, CBJ expected foreign investments to have grown to JD1.238 billion in 2017, compared with JD1.1 billion in 2016, marking a 12.1 per cent increase. 

The value of direct foreign investments in the third quarter of 2017 went up to JD1.02 billion, up by 19.1 per cent when compared with the JD854.2 million recorded in the July-September period of 2016.

CBJ expected the deficit of the current account in 2017 to have dropped to 8.4 per cent of GDP, down from 9.5 per cent in 2016.

The current account deficit is expected to decrease to 8.3 per cent of GDP in 2018, the bank said, attributing such results to anticipations for improvements in national exports, tourism income and expatriates’ remittances.

National exports grew by 1.8 per cent in 2017 to JD4.474 billion, compared with JD4.396 billion in the year before.

In 2017, the value of expatriates’ remittances went up by $12 million to $3.7 billion (some JD2.63 billion), and increased in January this year to $308.2 million (some JD218.82 million), with a growth rate of 4.2 per cent when compared to the same month of 2016.

The Kingdom’s tourism revenues in 2017 amounted to $4.6 billion (JD3.27 billion), marking a 12.5 per cent increase, when compared to $4.1 billion (JD2.91 billion) generated in 2016.

By the end of February 2018, tourism revenues grew by 7.2 per cent to $735.4 million (JD522.13 million), compared to $686 million (JD487.06 million) collected in the first two months of 2016.