Prime Minister Bisher Khasawneh Monday attended the signing ceremony of an agreement to launch a $85 million phosphate washing plant in Shidiya in Ma’an Governorate, which was sealed by the Jordan Phosphate Mines Company and Ideal Development for Manufacturing Industries Company.
The plant, with an annual capacity of 1.9 million tons of high-quality phosphate, is expected to be up and running in 23 months and will create 200 direct and 2,000 indirect job opportunities.
The Prime Minister said that his government had to deal with exceptional circumstances in the last two years due to the coronavirus pandemic, which hit hard the global economy and also affected the national economy after a difficult decade which saw a bare 2% growth rate, a modest figure compared with the years before.
The pandemic, he said, hit the daily lives of citizens and the various economic sectors, voicing the hope that “we are on the road to full recovery from this pandemic,” urging the public to take the vaccines and adhere to public health and safety requirements “to keep the policy of openness and to see such partnerships and ambitious projects as the one we signed today.”
The Prime Minister said that the government has challenges with regard to employment in the public sector, which no longer can accommodate the growing number of job-seekers, adding that “we cannot overcome the challenges of unemployment and poverty and achieve sustainable economic development without empowering the private sector and enhancing its partnership with the public sector.”
He said that enhancing the public-private sector partnership and addressing problems and obstacles facing investors is a top priority, adding that the government will soon send to His Majesty King Abdullah II an economic priority work programme within a matrix that will take into account the necessary funding for viable projects.
Source: Jordan News Agency