Jordan in 10 years

A plan, or vision, for Jordan in 2025 is now under discussion. The Ministry of Planning prepared the roadmap for the process of formulating the plan. The plan itself may not see the light before the end of this year, and perhaps even later.

One should distinguish between a working plan for implementing a chosen set of objectives to be achieved during the coming 10 years, an objective prediction of how things will look like 10 years ahead, and a document warning about what will happen in the absence of planning and intervention, i.e., based on the extension of the trends as they exist.

These three ways of approaching the future are all beneficial and have their applications. The best, of course, is the plan that sets desirable and practical objectives, along with the ways and means to achieve them.

However, planners, in particular, and the public opinion, in general, need to know what is expected to happen without having a plan. They need to be warned against the results of leaving things to run their course and develop according to the present direction.

Continuation of the present trends means that public debt, for example, will continue to rise at the rate of JD2.5 billion a year, to reach JD45 billion by 2025, which will be over 100 per cent of the gross domestic product.

In such a case, Jordan will be a candidate for a serious crisis.

The continuation of the present trend also means that the trade deficit will further deteriorate as long as exports’ proceeds do not exceed one third of imports’ cost, unless deficit in other areas of the economy will deteriorate to a level that will put an end to our ability to import freely.

At a seminar organised by the Transparency Commission, an NGO, the minister of energy was asked if his ministry has a strategic plan for energy.

The minister answered in the affirmative.

If such a question had been asked of any other minister, the same positive answer would have been given.

The government claims to have strategic plans for every economic or social sector. If that is true, the search for a master plan will not be that difficult.

It should be nothing more than collecting and fine-tuning the individual plans, which are assumed to be under implementation.

The present sectoral plans represent the product of the cumulative experience of past and present governments. They should be good enough as a starting point, instead of beginning from zero.

Assuming that those sectoral plans complement, and not contradict, each other, the Ministry of Planning can start by unifying these partial plans in one comprehensive document that can achieve the major targeted indicators of the general economy.

Long-term planning needs a relatively stable environment. It hardly works when facing unpredictable surprises, as is the case in our region.