Jordan

For many years, the Jordanian banking scene has been led by two major lenders – Arab Bank (ARBK) and the Housing Bank for Trade and Finance (HBTF). These two have been consolidating their role in the wider national and regional economy in recent times, which result-ed in 2012 being a more profitable year than 2011. This has been achieved during...

The passage of the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Law (REEL) in April 2012 marked a major step towards the development of a significant renewables generation capacity in Jordan. The key change in the law was to allow investors to propose renewable energy projects to the government, rather than having to respond to government tenders (as was...

With bond issues equivalent to around one-third of the total market capitalisation of the Amman Stock Exchange (ASE), the fixed-income market in Jordan clearly has some weight. Yet with few of these bonds ever traded, many market watchers wonder how this potential could be more fully realised. Opening the mar-ket outwards could be one way, bringing...

Faced with a number of external shocks in recent years, Jordan’s economy has shown a remarkable resilience in dealing with successive challenges. The Hashemite Kingdom has continued to grow in a recession-hit and risk-averse climate, and the government is demonstrat-ing a determination to tackle longstanding structural reforms. The...

reverses in 2009 and 2010. These, in turn, had followed major gains in the years leading up to the global down-turn, with the net figure standing at just over JD300m ($422m) in 2008. “As a small market, we really bene-fitted from foreign investment funds targeting phos-phates, potash and others,” said Tarek Yaghmour, the vice-president and head of research at Capital Invest-...