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Jordan: Kingdom's ranking drops in 'Doing Business'

By Omar Obeidat

AMMAN - Jordan's ranking in the 2012 Doing Business report retreated one place, disappointing policy makers who had hoped for a better position this year.

According to the report, which measures the ease of doing business in 183 countries, Jordan held the 96th position.

However, the World Bank's report, that was released Thursday by the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation ( IFC ), was not built on last year's report that was issued November 4, where Jordan's ranking was 111, and not 95.

Mukhallad Omari, director of the department of policies and strategies at the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, explained that the World Bank and the IFC made a post-report revaluation, which placed the Kingdom in 95th place, adding that the international organisations also introduced new economic indicators such as Getting Electricity, where Jordan ranked 36 out of 183 countries covered by the survey.

Omari noted that the ministry has focused its work with the IFC to improve Jordan's ranking on three indicators: Starting a Business, Trading Across Borders and Dealing with Construction Permits. In the three indicators the country made progress.

In the 10 key indicators that measure the overall ease of doing business, Jordan's ranking in the Starting a Business indicator advanced two places from 98 to 96 and made a significant improvement in the Trading Across Borders by 16 ranks from 74 to 58, but its ranking in the Getting Credit indicator saw a sharp decline from the 130th position to 150th.

In terms of Dealing with Construction Permits, the report showed that Jordan progressed by one place to 93 from 94. In the Registering a Property indicator the Kingdom's place went up to 101 this year from 103.

As the country's ranking remained unchanged in the indicators of Enforcing Contracts and Resolving Insolvency, its grading went down by two place in Protecting Investors and Paying Taxes indicators to 122 and 21 respectively, according to the survey.

Commenting on the sharp drop in Getting Credit indicator, Omari attributed the decline to lack of a credit bureau, which is under establishment, emphasising that if the credit bureau had been set up Jordan would have jumped over 50 places in this indicator, ultimately improving the Kingdom's overall ranking.

The report mentioned that Jordan has made starting a business easier by reducing the minimum capital requirement from JD1,000 to JD1, of which only half must be deposited before company registration.

It also highlighted that the Kingdom has made trading across borders faster by introducing X-ray scanners for risk management systems.

The outcome of the report will be disappointing for concerned policy makers, as Jordan's place was expected to improve.

In a recent interview with The Jordan Times, former minister of planning and international cooperation Jafar Hassan said that the ministry has established a task force comprising representatives from public and private sector entities to coordinate efforts to improve Jordan's rankings in the report.

"I am hopeful that we will see an advancement in these rankings compared to previous years because of the efforts undertaken by public sector institutions and the private sector to implement the joint action plan adopted by the government earlier in the year," he added, indicating this momentum will also continue in the coming year as the action plan is developed and will impact other reports such as the Competitiveness Report.

"It is important to keep all these rankings in our view and to constantly remind ourselves to push harder because it is not just about what we do here in Jordan but it is about how much better we do than others around us. So we have to be ahead of the curve if we want to ensure that we remain competitive and can compete with others in a significant way," Hassan stressed.

According to the report, Jordan ranked ninth among Arab countries after Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Tunisia, Oman, Kuwait and Morocco.

© Jordan Times 2011