Three councils to revitalise economy

Calling on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for an economic reform programme does not mean that the ministerial economic team is unable to formulate a good programme, define the needed objectives and describe the necessary measures that should be taken in accordance with a reasonable timetable.

It means that the situation calls for certain unavoidable measures that are well known to everyone but no one is willing to make them, bear the responsibility and pay the political price that goes with them, especially when it comes to raising taxes and hiking prices.

Likewise, the formation of an Economic Policy Council, supervised personally by His Majesty the King, does not mean that the ministerial economic team has lost confidence or proved unable to draw the needed economic policies. 

It means that the King is ready to use his personal political and popular capital to push reform, and advance the projects and hard decisions that the government hesitates to implement unless it gets sufficient Royal support.

The King is supposed to govern through his ministers. Instead it seems that the government needs to govern through the King.

Between the ministerial economic team on one hand and the Economic Policy Council on the other , we seem to forget that we already have a consultative Economic and Social Council, consisting of a selected group of economists with extensive experience, to tackle the same challenges. It costs the Treasury JD750,000 a year. It did not try to communicate with the public opinion.

Members of this council are not making themselves visible, and the government may not be aware of its existence and the services it may render if asked.

The three economic bodies face a structural problem that apparently they may not be able to overcome. The problem is the acute imbalance between the meagre resources of the country and the relatively large population.

It is interesting to know that Jordan’s population doubled 27 times in less than 70 years, due to influx of refugees from Palestine, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, let alone guest workers approaching 1 million. 

Of course the economy did not grow at this high rate to cope with the huge population growth.

The ministerial economic team, the experts of the World Bank and the IMF, the Economic Policy Council and the Economic and Social Council may not be able to bridge the big gap between resources and population.

So far, the gap has been bridged by foreign grants and loans. But these sources are not sustainable. They have already reached a dead end.

This imbalance between economic resources and population is the reason behind the high unemployment of around 15 per cent of the labour force. The economy is unable to generate over 100,000 new jobs a year to employ new comers to the labour market.

Imbalance between economic resources and population is also responsible for poverty and low standards of living, as long as Jordan stands ready to welcome and absorb any wave of refugees against limited and temporary financial assistance from the international community, so much so that Jordan’s population has been growing at the rate of 8 per cent a year during the last five years.