Business

AMMAN — Real estate trading in the Kingdom went up by 26 per cent during the first four months of 2014 reaching JD2.5 billion compared to JD2 billion during the same period of 2013. 

According to Department of Land and Survey report, released on Monday, government revenues from the property market increased by 25 per cent to JD139.5 million during the January-April period of this year.

The value of exemptions related to apartments amounted to JD26.4 million, bringing the overall total of revenues and exemptions  to JD166 million.

The number of transactions rose by 24 per cent reaching 33,998 deals during the first four months of this year. 

Out of the total, 14,438 transactions were in Amman alone, accounting for 42 per cent, and 19,560 transactions were in other governorates, accounting for 58 per cent.

In Amman, investors sought apartments as the number of transactions came at 7,994 whereas the number of land deals stood at 6,444.

The preference was more for land in governorates as the number of transactions was 16,081 deals compared to only 3,479 for apartments.

The number of purchase transactions by non-Jordanians stood at 1,808 deals, of which 1,206 were contracts to buy apartments valued at JD109.4 million (66 per cent), and 602 transactions to purchase land valued at JD56.5 million (34 per cent).

Combined, the total came at JD165.9 million, 25 per cent higher than the revenues registered during the first four months of 2013.

Iraqis topped the list of non-Jordanian investors with 764 properties, followed by Saudis, in second place, with 254 possessions.

Syrians, in third place, purchased 198 properties and Kuwaitis bought 163 assets.

In terms of value, Iraqis also came first with JD102 million accounting for 62 per cent of non-Jordanian purchases, Saudis’ percentage was 9 per cent with JD15 million in the second place, while Syrians’ transaction values were estimated to reach JD12 million with 7 per cent, while the other 22 per cent included other nationalities.  

During April 2014, trading in Jordan’s real estate market reached around JD737 million, a 26 per cent increase compared to JD584 million in April 2013.

SYDNEY — The Australian budget later this month will involve "tough decisions" to put the economy back on track, a senior minister said Sunday as a poll revealed a voter backlash against any new tax to cut debt.

Australia has enjoyed more than 20 years of annual growth, sidestepping the worst of the global financial crisis due to a mining boom fuelled by Asian demand.

But the government elected in September has said it is facing a deficit of A$47 billion ($43.6 billion) this fiscal year due to the previous Labour administration, and that the debt will only mount in coming years.

House Leader Christopher Pyne refused to comment on whether a new tax reportedly under consideration to plug the deficit — on workers earning more than A$80,000 a year — would be unveiled as part of the budget on May 13.

"I think they [Australians] fully understand we have to make the tough decisions necessary... to get the economy back on track again," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"They know it won't be easy and it is important that everyone shares in that burden of repairing the damage Labour did to the economy and to the budget," he said.

A Galaxy Poll in The Sunday Telegraph found 72 per cent of voters felt that introducing the levy would amount to a broken promise by Abbott, who before the election had pledged no new taxes.

The poll of the 1,391 voters also found support for Abbott's coalition had dropped significantly since the election, from 53.5 to 48 per cent, meaning it would lose an election to Labour if a poll were held now. 

Pyne dismissed the poll, saying the government had been elected to fix the budget and Australians understood this was a priority.

"There's no easy way out from the debt and deficit disaster left for us by the Labour government," he said.

"We don't want to end up in the situation that Europe and the United States are in — and we don't have to as long as we have a government that is prepared to take responsibility and make the decisions now that will set up the economy and our society in the years ahead," Pyne added.

In a statement, Prime Minister Tony Abbott stressed that the nation must live within its means and try to reduce debt.

"Beyond a certain point, you don't control debt; debt controls you," he said.

Opposition Labour leader Bill Shorten said his party would oppose any deficit levy.

"Increasing taxes on working-class and middle-class Australians is a terrible mistake, and people will not forgive Mr Abbott for breaking this very big promise," he said.

Separately, the Australian government said Friday that it wants to lift the pension entitlement age to 70 — the highest in the developed world — by the year 2035 to help cope with an ageing population.

Treasurer Joe Hockey said the previous Labour government planned to raise the age from 65 to 67 in 2023 and the new Abbott administration wanted to take it further by 2035.

"Increasing the pension entitlement age to 70, we are intending for that to occur in 21 years' time," said Hockey.

Australia has no statutory retirement age but men have been entitled to the pension at age 65 and women at 60 since it was introduced in 1908.

While no members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) group of rich countries yet have an official retirement age as high as 70, the effective age for men in Japan and South Korea is close to this despite an official retirement age of 60, a recent report by the OECD said.

Hockey said any Australians getting the pension now would not be affected but he stressed the government's view that the "age of entitlement" was over.

"It is hugely important we have long-term planning out of this budget," he said.

Australia has for years grappled with how to plan for its ageing population, and in 2009 the former government said it would gradually push back the age at which people could claim the state pension to defuse a "demographic time-bomb".

Over the next 30 years, the number of Australians aged 65 or over will double from 3.5 million to 7 million, accounting for 22 per cent of the population, the Actuaries Institute of Australia has forecast.

Meanwhile the number of those aged over 85 will almost triple from under 0.5 million to 1.4 million people in that time, placing pressure on the health system, it said.

Australia currently has a population of 23.4 million, and the life expectancy at birth is 79 for males and 84 for females, according to official Australian Bureau of Statistics figures.

DUBAI — Egypt's tourism minister on Sunday announced ambitious plans to try to revive the country's tourism sector, in distress after years of political turbulence.

Government data showed last month that tourism revenue dropped 43 per cent to $1.3 billion in the first quarter of this year.

Egyptian Tourism Minister Hisham Zaazou said in an interview in Dubai: "The world will see tourism returning to Egypt. We have an ambitious global plan to show the world that it is safe and fun to visit Egypt anytime."

Egypt's Islamist insurgency has largely spared tourist sites, but on Friday suicide bombers hit near the tourist resort of Sharm El Sheikh, killing a soldier and wounding at least eight other people.

Three South Koreans were killed in February when a bomb hit a tourist bus in South Sinai near a border crossing with Israel.

Zaazou said: "Our plan is to attract more than 25 million tourists by 2020. Revenues generated will double from the 2010 peak of $12.5 billion to $25 billion within the coming 6 years." 

He added that India, China and Latin America would be major target regions in a marketing campaign.

The tourist sector hopes that Egypt's political climate will become more stable.

Speaking in Dubai less than four weeks before the country's planned presidential election, Zaazou said Egypt is gearing up for a fresh new start with a new president and a parliament.

"Tourism in Egypt has its captive audience and the major flow of tourists will happen once the political scene is settled," he said.

Latest government figures show that tourism currently contributes 11.3 per cent of Egypt's gross domestic product (GDP) and brings in 14.4 per cent of foreign currency revenues. 

Three-year campaign

More than 14.7 million tourists visited Egypt in 2010, dropping to 9.8 million after the revolution that toppled former president Hosni Mubarak. The sector picked up in 2012, attracting 11.5 million but shrank again to 9.5 million last year after various attacks on tourist destinations.

But the tourism ministry is launching this week a three-year marketing campaign in the hope of attracting tourists and investors to the country, probably the country's last hope in fixing its own internal finances without relying on aid from Gulf Arab states.

"We are currently negotiating agreements to prevent double taxation on airlines and tourist agencies. We want to partner with companies like Emirates Airline and Etihad Airways to bring in tourists to the country. There's a well-prepared plan in place," Zaazou said.

Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) pledged more than $12 billion in aid to Egypt after the army toppled president Mohamed Morsi on July 3 following mass protests against his rule.

Zaazou called on companies in the UAE like property developer Emaar Properties and hotel management firm Jumeirah to invest in the Egyptian market.

The government earlier this year sold five plots of land on the Red Sea coast and plans to initiate new investment opportunities for local and international investors.

"We had valued the square metre in this area at $38 but it was sold at more than $150 per metre at the auction. Investors buying the land must know the value of what they're getting," he said.

RIYADH — Saudi Public Transport Co. (Saptco) has won a $2.1 billion contract to operate and maintain buses in Riyadh jointly with French group RATP Dev. The 10-year deal is worth 7.885 billion riyals ($2.1 billion, 1.5 billion euros), Saptco indicated, noting that Riyadh authorities informed them they won the deal on Wednesday. Saptco and RATP Dev in January 2010 signed a strategic partnership to develop the public transport system in Saudi Arabia, including a tramway and metro system. In July 2013, Saudi Arabia granted three foreign consortiums — led by US, Spanish and Italian firms — contracts worth $22.5 billion (16.9 billion euros) to build a Riyadh metro The metro aims to help ease traffic congestion in the capital, a city of six million people, with a six-line network across Riyadh and serving the airport.

LONDON — London's red-hot property market has struck a new record with the sale of a £140 million ($237 million) unfurnished apartment, but even the developer of the opulent building warned that some asking prices in Britain were unsustainable.

Buoyed by the wealth of Russian oligarchs, Chinese tycoons and Arab sheikhs, London has become one of the most expensive markets on earth, raising concerns ahead of parliamentary elections in 2015 that locals are being squeezed out of the market.

"We're in boom-time prices, more expensive than we've ever been in the history of mankind," Nick Candy, one of the developers of London's One Hyde Park luxury apartments, at the pinnacle of the capital's super-prime residential sector, told Reuters.

"There is a concern over the market overheating... . Everyone thinks the main central London is doing so well, [so] the ripple effect is going throughout the UK, and some of the prices being achieved are probably unrealistic and not sustainable," he said.

But money is still pouring in.

A source familiar with the matter said an eastern European buyer bought a penthouse at the One Hyde Park apartment block for a record £140 million.

Candy confirmed that a 16,000 square foot penthouse had been sold but declined to comment on the price or name the buyer. Developer CPC Group, which is run by his brother Christian, said the flat could be worth £160-175 million when furnished.

Britain's previous record for an apartment was set three years ago by Ukrainian billionaire Rinat Akhemtov, who paid £136 million for a penthouse and apartment at One Hyde Park to knock together into one property.

There have been more than $2 billion in sales at the block, whose developer is a joint venture between CPC Group and Waterknights, the private company of Qatar's Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassim Bin Jabor Al Thani.

Candy & Candy, run by Nick Candy, were the interior designers and development managers for the project.

Political threats

The wall of money chasing a finite amount of property has sent luxury London prices soaring almost 80 per cent since 2009, and while plutocrats' ostentatious purchases grab the limelight, prices have rocketed even in poorer areas.

Prime central London house prices have risen 79.4 per cent since March 2009, against a 40.6 per cent increase in Greater London house prices over the same period, according to data from Savills.

Candy, who with brother Christian started out in 1995 with a £6,000 loan from their grandmother, indicated that the main risks to the market were changes in government policy, a rise in interest rates or oversupply at the top end.

"If the political climate changes in either [London or New York], so in London next year the government wants to charge mansion tax and other taxes, the market might change. They might have a correction, a significant correction," he said.

"I don't see a massive correction unless a number of things happen, firstly a change of government, second of all, interest rates start going up high and inflation starts going," he added.

The British government has in recent months imposed new taxes on overseas purchasers, while the opposition Labour Party, which is leading in opinion polls for the national election, has proposed a tax on houses worth over £2 million.

Rising prices have prompted a rush of luxury developments.

More than 20,000 residential units — worth over £1,250 per square foot — are scheduled to be built in London over the next 10 years, building consultancy EC Harris said in December, adding that this was more than double the 2011 pipeline.

Such is London's wealth that Property consultant Savills calculates 10 London boroughs now have an aggregate property value equivalent to the total value of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland combined. 

Separately, the owner of much of London's upmarket Mayfair and Belgravia districts has sold millions of pounds of prime properties, seeing recent rampant price rises as unsustainable and preferring to invest in rental homes in cheaper districts.

Grosvenor Group, controlled by the Duke of Westminster — one of Britain's richest men, said it had cut its exposure to superprime London homes last year, making sales that helped its Britain and Ireland unit treble profit.

Demand from foreign investors in search of a safe haven has pushed London's luxury home prices up by 68 per cent since 2009, compared with a rise of 49 per cent in greater London as a whole, according to property consultancy Knight Frank, leading many analysts to express concern that a bubble might be forming.

"I'm more concerned about it [high-end residential pricing] than I was last year," said Chief Executive Mark Preston, who last year called the rate of growth in London luxury house prices unsustainable.

"It's very much a deliberate initiative on our part to capitalise on prices that we think are high," Preston added.

Grosvenor said it sold off £240 million ($400 million) worth of central London homes, including row of mid-19th century terraces in Belgravia for 115 million.

The company intends to reinvest in rental homes outside its traditional Mayfair and Belgravia turf, targeting more affordable neighbourhoods, Preston said. It is looking at securing up to three schemes, having already spent £70 million on a site in the Bermondsey district last year, where it intends to let homes.

"Housing for rent is something that we're beginning to turn our minds to more than we've done in the past," he added. "We're recognising that London desperately needs more in that mid-market area where people are literally priced out." 

The firm is controlled by the Grosvenor family, headed by Gerald Grosvenor, who was No. 8 in Britain's Sunday Times Rich List last year with his £7.8 billion fortune.

Grosvenor's London estate, which it has owned for more than 300 years, comprises 300 acres of Mayfair and Belgravia with more than 1,500 homes, shops and offices as well as investments in China, Europe and North America, and a fund management arm.

The company said group profit before tax rose 38 per cent to £506.9 million in 2013. The value of its property assets was 5.8 billion, unchanged from 2012. 

According to a recent key survey, British house prices rose strongly last year.

Prices rallied 7.5 per cent in December 2013 compared with the level in December 2012, according to a survey by lender Halifax, which is part of the state-rescued Lloyds Banking Group.

However on a monthly basis, house prices fell by 0.6 per cent in December from November. That was the first drop for 11 months and took the average property price to £173,467 ($284,727, 209,579 euros).

The nation's property market was also bolstered last year by government stimulus programmes and record-low interest rates, analysts said.

"The revival in house prices over 2013 is due to a sharp rise in housing demand coupled with a very subdued supply of homes coming onto the market," said Capital Economics analyst Matthew Pointon. "That has led to very tight market conditions, and put the ball firmly in the seller's court — homes are selling faster and at a price much closer to the asking price."

He added: "Demand has been bolstered by record low rates, government schemes and fears that house prices are about to take-off."

Halifax forecast that prices will rise by between 4 and 8 per cent during 2014.

"Mounting signs that the economic recovery is becoming firmly established, together with a predicted decline in unemployment, should further boost consumer confidence over the coming months," said Halifax housing economist Martin Ellis.

KUWAIT — Energy subsidies are draining Kuwait's public budget, the Gulf state's finance minister said on Wednesday, as the government carries out a spending review to help avoid a budget deficit as early as this decade.

Subsidies in the major oil producer are expected to cost 5.11 billion dinars ($18.2 billion) next fiscal year to cover items like fuel and energy.

Kuwait's growth model has generated large improvements in living standards and welfare, Finance Minister Anas Al Saleh told a conference co-chaired by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

"However, this growth model has involved many costs. The public sector wage bill is currently very high as a per centage of public spending, subsidisation of basic goods is exhausting our state budget," he said.

The IMF says Kuwait, one of the world's richest countries per capita, could have a budget deficit as early as 2017 if it keeps spending at the current rate. Kuwait estimates this could happen by around 2021. It has posted a budget surplus for at least the past 15 years, according to latest available data.

Policy makers have intensified calls for economic reform, but any changes are likely to face resistance from the elected parliament and prove unpopular in a country which provides a cradle-to-grave welfare system for its citizens.

Analysts say extensive social spending programmes are one of the reasons why Gulf Arab states such as Kuwait, which has no income tax, have been shielded from the kind of Arab Spring unrest seen elsewhere in the region.

Thanks to subsidies it costs as little as 5.2 dinars ($18.40) to fill an 80-litre petrol tank. Electricity costs just 2 fils (less than 1 US cent) per kilowatt hour, a fraction of what it costs to produce.

Results of the subsidies review are expected this year. Kuwaiti newspapers have reported that the government is considering lifting subsidies for expatriates, who make up two-thirds of the population. Saleh told reporters on Tuesday that nothing had been decided yet.

He also told the conference that Gulf Arab countries need to reduce their reliance on oil for state revenues. Crude income accounts for more than 90 per cent of Kuwait's government revenues.

"You will see the cost for producing oil becomes higher and higher now. Really you cannot depend on oil forever, this is becoming ever clear," IMF Deputy Managing Director Min Zhu told reporters on the sidelines of the conference.

Gulf policy makers had started to realise this after seeing changes in the global oil supply structure, demand and costs, Zhu said. "They realised then they cannot rely on oil forever."

Energy subsidies in Kuwait account for 6 per cent of the gross domestic product (GDP and this is too big, he said.

"If you say you need a sustainable fiscal account, the first thing you want to cut is energy subsidies," he added.

Money saved on subsidies can be used on social expenditure, such as healthcare and education, he said, adding that per dollar spending on such areas was much more productive than on subsidies, which did not always reach the people in need.

"This is the area we talk to many authorities in the region [about]. I can tell you, it was not an easy issue before but now people are open to talk about it," Zhu said.

AMMAN — Arab Potash Company (APC) will be distributing cash dividends to shareholders at a rate of 150 per cent as authorised by a general assembly meeting this week.

According to an APC disclosure to the Amman Stock Exchange, the shareholders also agreed that  both APC and Jordan Bromine Company have a joint liability in the natural gas purchase deal  as recommended by the board of directors.

APC Chairman Jamal Al Sarayreh indicated in the company’s 57th annual report that the gas deal was extremely necessary to check high energy and electricity costs arising especially from expensive heavy oil fuel.

By securing natural gas by 2016 for 15 years from Nobel Energy, the chairman pointed out that APC will be able to cut potash production cost by JD11 per tonne. 

“For APC to maintain competitiveness, it became a matter of survival  that we seek solutions to curb high production costs,” Sarayreh wrote in a foreword, noting that the company could not have a say in the international prices of potash.

He indicated that due to high energy costs, APC was forced last year to close the salt and magnesia plants and, consequently, dismiss hundreds of workers.       

Sarayreh explained that besides lower international prices of potash, APC suffered in 2013 from a 30 per cent increase in energy prices, a 9 per cent rise in water charges and a 9 per cent in labour costs.

With all these challenges, APC generated a JD130.7 million net profit last year compared to JD198.8 million in 2012. Sales came at JD521.2 million, down from JD586.3 million.

The high production cost showed in JD337.9 million that was incurred in 2013 compared to JD285.6 million in the previous year during which  the sales were much higher.

According to the annual report, APC paid JD25.9 million to the state treasury as mining fees.

In terms of volume, APC production was down from 1.8 million tonnes in 2012 to 1.74 million tonnes last year, although the company described the 2013 level as 100 per cent in line with output plan. 

AMMAN — Experts from 12 countries discussed this week generalising evaluation theoretically and practically in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). 

Several sessions and workshops focused on evaluating development based on facts and evidence and best practices in evaluation, according to a statement sent from the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation to The Jordan Times. 

The aim of the conference, Middle East and North Africa Evaluation Network (EvalMENA) held on Monday in Amman, was to learn prioritising, raise performance and enhance institutional governance and decision making mechanisms.

Planning and International Cooperation Minister Ibrahim Saif said  attention should not be paid only to finance development projects from aid, but also to finance productive investment projects, especially under the current circumstances prevailing in the region.

“This can be achieved by effective evaluation of the development programmes and practices to improve these communities and raise their performance in the future,” the statement quoted him as saying. 

The best practices underlined the importance of development through an effective agenda which is based on improving local and regional evaluation efficiencies and expertise. 

“Middle East and North Africa region is undergoing profound transformations. The evaluation profession is called into play an important role in shouldering these transformations towards an inclusive and equitable better future, otherwise the whole region will get constantly entangled in a never-ending spiral of social unrest,” Saif said.

AMMAN/ABU DHABI — War and drought have crippled Syria's wheat crop, with some experts now forecasting output of the staple food could fall to around a third of pre-war levels, and possibly even below one million tonnes for the first time in 40 years.

Agricultural experts, traders and Syrian farmers who talked to Reuters gave crop estimates ranging from one million tonnes to 1.7 million at best, a more pessimistic range than that given by the United Nations earlier this month.

Before the war, Syria produced around 3.5 million tonnes of wheat on average, enough to satisfy local demand and usually permit substantial exports, thanks in part to irrigation from the Euphrates River that waters its vast eastern desert.

The last time its wheat harvest failed to exceed one million tonnes was in 1973, although catastrophic droughts have pushed the crop close to that level in 1989 and 2008.

"This year the maximum that Syria will reach in terms of local wheat production will not exceed one million tonnes," a Middle East-based commodities trade source with knowledge of Syrian grain markets said.

"One of the main factors limiting production is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to produce it given the extent of the war. There is genuine fear on the ground in traditional production areas and the risks are high," he indicated

The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) had cited an estimate of 1.7 million to 2 million tonnes for this year and said that rainfall relied on for crops in Syria's northwestern region was less than half of the average since September.

"There are a host of factors, starting from the start of ploughing to soil fertilisation to harvesting and transport and marketing, and the whole process is disrupted, all is reduced to a minimum level," Hillal Mohammad, a UN agricultural expert based in Amman, said.

Before the war, the Syrian government typically bought around 2.5 million tonnes of wheat each year to distribute to bakeries that feed the public subsidised bread, and to bolster its strategic reserve.

Government purchases of domestic wheat have declined and are expected to fall further as chaos caused by civil war and drought hurt the state's ability to secure supplies.

Nearly a third of Syrians have either fled the country or are displaced within it, and swathes of territory are in the hands of rebels fighting to overthrow President Bashar Assad, where the government food distribution system has crumbled.

The agriculture ministry told state media earlier this month that wheat was being grown on 1.2 million hectares of land but did not give an estimate of how much would be produced or bought by the government. Syria typically planted 1.7 million hectares before the war, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

Experts doubt the Damascus government's ability to forecast figures accurately, citing the difficulty of gaining access to most crop growing areas.

"It's difficult for agricultural officials in a country where state organs have effectively lost administrative control of large swathes of territory in the main grain producing Jazira area to assess the crop sown in these areas, let alone estimate production," said an agricultural expert with close knowledge of Syria, who spoke on condition he not be identified.

Agriculture ministry officials declined to comment on the matter when contacted by Reuters.

Yusef Abu Ahmed, a farmer in Atma, a northern village near the Turkish border, said by telephone that the length of wheat stalks was about 20 centimetres compared with 80 centimetres in normal years.

Some farmers have pumped underground water to compensate for poor rain, but the high cost of diesel has limited that choice for others in the western agricultural belt of Idlib, Aleppo and Homs, where wheat production is mostly rain-fed.

"Our wheat straw will end up being used for grazing because of the poor rain this season," said Ibrahim Al Sheikh, a 36 year-old farmer in the plains of Halazoun, in rebel held northwestern Syria.

Disruptions to state procurement

With drought hitting its rain-fed wheat crop in the west, the hope for Syria seems to lie in its irrigated crop lands in the east, which before the crisis constituted almost 60-70 per cent of the country's total wheat production.

Some local farmers told Reuters they have sown large tracts of land using elaborate irrigation canals and dams that preceded the crisis, and have escaped widespread damage.

The agriculture ministry says it set aside 80 billion Syrian pounds ($539.88 million) to buy wheat and barley this season.

Still, even with the funds for procurement set aside and with irrigated lands escaping the drought, the government is not guaranteed to get its hands on the production.

"Even if there is production, marketing is severely disrupted," Mohammad indicated. "It's getting worse for farmers getting seed and fertilisers etc, and for the state's elaborate procurement system, with collection and gathering centres almost no longer functioning." 

In many parts of Syria's main eastern breadbasket area known as Al Jazira, which spans Hasaka, Deir Al Zour and Raqqa provinces, the government is not in control. The area around the now rebel-held city of Raqqa alone produces around a quarter of the national harvest.

One local resident from a farming family said the militant Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant that governs Raqqa and its rural hinterland have told farmers they are free to dispose their wheat as they choose, even selling it to Turkish traders.

Government officials do have good access to areas in Hasaka, Hama and some areas in the northeastern part of the country near the Kurdish-held Qamishli city, another agricultural expert said on condition of anonymity. But the situation in the country overall remains murky. 

AMMAN –– The Ministry of Interior will ease security procedures for investors as well as measures related to labour permits, a government official said Tuesday. 

According to a statement issued by the Jordan Industrial Estates Corporation (JIEC), director of the interior ministry's local development directorate Raed Odwan said the ministry plans to sign an agreement with the corporation soon to relax security measures for non-Jordanian investors in a bid to boost investments in the Kingdom. 

Odwan was quoted by the statement as saying that the agreement would be in line with the ministry's strategy to achieve economic development, particularly in governorates. 

The statement said the official made the remarks as he was attending a visit by JIEC Director General Loay Sehwail to Balqa Governorate. 

Sehwail revealed that JIEC has floated a tender to design an industrial estate in Balqa, noting that it will be built on 221 dunums. 

Sehwail said the corporation has attracted a total of 21 investments in the industrial sector during the first quarter of 2014, with an estimated value of JD69 million. 

The investments are projected to create 3,500 jobs, he added. 

According to the JIEC chief, the value of investments in industrial estates reached JD2.29 billion by the end of 2013 compared with JD2.1 billion in 2012. 

The investments are expected to create 40,000 employment opportunities, he added.