Deputizing for His Majesty King Abdullah, Prime Minister Bisher Khasawneh attended the Jordanian Industry Day celebration, which was held by the Amman Chamber of Industry. The celebration was held to highlight the industrial sector achievements in support of the national economy and honor major industrial exporters. “His Majesty the King always directs us to support the industrial sector, as it is the sector with largest employment rate, recording 20 per cent in Jordan and constitutes a quarter of the size of the national economy, 95 per cent of exports and attracts about 70 per cent of the foreign investments in the Kingdom,” Khasawneh said in the ceremony, which was attended by ministers, officials and representatives of the private sector. “The government is committed to a real partnership with the private sector in our endeavor to serve citizens and find solutions to unemployment, in light of the limited ability of the government apparatus to provide jobs, which range between 10-15 thousand jobs annually only, with inputs to the labor market reaching 120,000 people annually,” Khasawneh added. The Prime Minister pointed out that Jordan has provided an appropriate environment to enable the industrial sector to access global markets via free trade agreements with Arab countries and with major countries such as the United States of America, which have contributed to increasing the volume of Jordan’s exports to the USA to more than $2 billion, which is likely to increase in many pharmaceutical and food industries, He added that many Jordanian companies have begun to provide many US facilities with air conditioning. “We rely a lot on the industrial sector and other Jordanian economic sectors in order to achieve objectives of the economic modernization vision, foremost of which is increasing economic growth rates and providing jobs,” the Prime Minister said.
Source: Jordan News Agency