‘Relaunch: an instance of relaunching a product’.
The Oxford Dictionary definition could not be any clearer. That is the approach King Abdullah II took with what he has defined as ‘Jordan Relaunched’ — a 10-year plan to take growth from just over 3 per cent in 2014 to 7.5 per cent by 2025.
King Abdullah unveiled this plan in a one-on-one interview at his office complex, the Al-Husseiniya Palace, on a hilltop overlooking the Jordanian capital. I had in total an hour with His Majesty to discuss what is certainly one of the most difficult leadership roles going.
This is the year 16 since he ascended to the throne, and arguably, it is shaping up to be one of the toughest. Daesh is a dominant force north of his border in Syria and on his eastern flank in Iraq. Two nights before we sat down for our interview, the terrorist group seized Palmyra, killing 400 women and children along the way, with an ongoing threat of destroying 4000 years of history.
“To me it just makes no sense whatsoever how these people think. I think they have no concept of humanity, of religion, of life and I think it is just a wake-up call for all of us what this threat it,” King Abdullah said with a strong sense of purpose.
DAESH has forced Jordan to put new meaning into the definition of being accommodating. The country, with a population now edging towards 10 million, has taken in 1.4 million Syrians who have fled violence.
Today, Syrians compete against Jordanians for low-paying jobs in a country that has some of the highest youth unemployment rates in the region, some 33 per cent according to the latest count by the World Bank. The concept behind the relaunch is to export fewer of their college educated talent by offering investors a safe haven in an unstable region.
“We are a young population, tech-savvy, bilingual. So, a small country to be able to adapt to the region challenges is something that we have been usually fairly successful in being able to do,” he said.
From 2000-07, Jordan delivered average growth of 6 per cent, but it took sizeable economic hits from double-barrelled shots over the past seven years: the first being the Western-led financial crisis, followed by the Arab Spring. Both dried up financing for major projects such as the Port of Aqaba on the Red Sea and his new financial district called Abdali in Amman.
Unlike the King, whose palace seems to run on Swiss time, those major projects and a long list of others have lumbered well behind schedule. Global and regional chief executives told me he has to re-engage and be more hands-on looking after this relaunch.
The veteran Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour has been at the helm for nearly three years, but previous governments, many businessmen tell me, lacked the mandate to push projects through and allowed the fabled state bureaucracy to cloud the vision that had come down from on high.
Today’s focus is on seven sectors from a new high-speed broadband network to a refurbished road network, with an emphasis on clean-burning electric autos.
‘Jordan Relaunched’ is ambitious. Beyond doubling the annual growth rate, it aims to slash the country’s debt nearly in half to 47 per cent of GDP and take domestic energy production from just 2 per cent of supplies today to nearly 40 per cent in a decade.
“A lot of it is going into alternative energy, which is going to make Jordan into a powerhouse,” said the King, “So there is a major leap in renewable energy in Jordan.”
Having chaired numerous high-level panels over the past six weeks, a common thread can be found running through each one of them. Smaller countries are becoming more attractive, because in theory, they can adopt global best practices in a shorter time to market. Jordan, if you think about it, wants to achieve what Singapore and Estonia have already delivered.
The challenge for Jordan is of course the neighbourhood in which it sits. Investors have been scared off by uncertainty. Foreign direct investment averaged nearly $2.5 billion a year before the financial crisis and the Arab Spring; it has been hovering around $1.5 billion ever since.
That, as Americans often say, “just ain’t good enough” and is why King Abdullah timed his relaunch to coincide with Jordan’s hosting of the World Economic Forum at the Dead Sea.
Jordan put a buffet of $20 billion worth of opportunities in front of investors — real government backed projects that are ready to go to tender. Before the weekend was done, the government made sure about a third of that total had been signed off.
Let the high-profile palace relaunch begin and for the sake of Jordanians — hopefully — be sustained.
The writer is CNN’s Emerging Markets Editor.
