Jordan improves score in ease of doing business — World Bank

AMMAN — The World Bank listed Jordan among 20 countries whose "ease of doing business" score has improved, according to a ranking published on its website on Friday.

Areas of improvement for Jordan include getting credit, paying taxes and resolving insolvency, according to the report.

The report said that Jordan expanded access to credit after the  credit bureau began offering credit scores to banks and other financial institutions, in addition to introducing a new law on secure transactions, which regulates functional equivalents to loans secured with movable property, such as financial leases and fiduciary transfer of title.

In regards to paying taxes, the report said that the Kingdom has simplified this process through integrating labour taxes and other mandatory payments into its e-payment system.

"Jordan also adopted a new insolvency law that permits the continuation of the debtor’s essential contracts during insolvency proceedings and allows the debtor to reject overly-burdensome contracts," the report noted.

"The economies are selected based on the number of reforms and on how much their ease of doing business score improved," the report said, indicating that improvements are seen in at least three of 10 overall areas aggregated in the calculation of the score.

Minister of Industry, Trade and Supply Tareq Hammouri said that the positive improvements shown in the World Bank report are a testament to the continued efforts of the concerned ministries that worked on issuing the laws and regulations that impacted the business environment, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

The Jordan Investment Commission, in its "Investor's Guide" book, mentions that "Jordan provides a transparent and a sound base of financial services with high levels of access to loans and venture capital."

"The country's financial ecosystem is based on accredited macroeconomic and legal fundamentals paving the way for sustained economic growth. In fact, the banking and insurance sector is one of Jordan's growth drivers as this sector alone grew 4.3 per cent in the first half of 2017," the guide added.

The government works continuously to improve Jordan's business environment as one of the most important factors in attracting investments and improving the economy, economist Husam Ayesh told The Jordan Times on Saturday over the phone.

Ayesh said that processing taxes has become more efficient, regulations governing credit have improved continuously over time and many other indicators have shown progress, but work needs to continue in all possible areas in order to see improvement in the country's ranking.

"We need to significantly improve even more indicators due to their importance in economic performance and attracting investors, which will ultimately ease the transition into an economy that is able to offer advanced investment and a safe environment for all investors," Ayesh said, noting that the current improvements need to be sustained as well.