Jordan is open for business. This is the message being hammered out by King Abdullah and the government through various institutions such as the Jordan Investment Board and the recently created Jordan Investment Commission.

There is a get-up-and-go attitude in the top echelons to keep the wheels of economic development not just running but fly.

At a macroeconomic level, the tumbling of oil prices from $115 per barrel to around $60 is creating anguish not only for oil producers but even for importers like Jordan, Morocco, Lebanon, Tunisia and so on. While price declines are in their favour, for some of these economies it also means receiving less foreign aid and concessions. However, it is argued that for every $10 price drop these countries save $4 billion in their annual trade balance, which means this is a net gain.

Jordan regards the challenges as those that can be turned around and be put to good use. There are advantages — the Aqaba Port as a hub to the rest of the Middle East and the world, a stable political environment, incentives and tax exemptions to encourage investments, etc — that are being reiterated when Jordanian decision-makers meet global business people.

It would like to be seen as a safe heaven for foreign investments and buttressed by its strategic location to the Arab world markets. Jordan is also the crossing point between continents.

As King Abdullah says, Jordan has access to 1 billion consumers which it can reach for trade and economic exchange, especially since it has agreements with the European Union, a free-trade pact with the US which it ratified in 2001, and is a partner in the Arab Free Trade Agreement. This is a message he tirelessly makes in the company of world leaders, investors and business delegates.

This is part of Jordan’s strategy to target the world and lure them into investing and cementing economic, financial and business relations with them, a position which it has sought to capitalise on in the mid-1990s, especially from the private sector in the Arabian Gulf as they started to buy real estate, industrial projects, telecommunications and tourism ventures. These were being pushed by the Jordanian government through its National Tourism Strategies.

Because of the economic boom up to 2008, Gulf money poured into the coffers of the Kingdom. Foreign direct investment from the Gulf was $74 million (Dh272 million) in 2000 but reached $3.1 billion in 2006. In 2011, it declined to $1.5 billion, mainly as a result of the Arab Spring that reached its apex that year and the ongoing effects of the global economic crises. FDI flows hovered around $1.4 billion in 2013.

Now, the strategy by the government aims at large-scale infrastructure. With the concept of greater economic dynamism, virtually every industry in Jordan is being opened up to the participation of foreign capital, including pharmaceuticals and industry like potash and phosphate. It is safe to say that manufacturing today makes up to 25 per cent of the GDP, employs around 250,000, and accounting for 90 per cent of exports.

Underpinning these has been thinning of the bureaucracy. Legislations as well as institutions are constantly being re-evaluated to attract investments through tax incentives, less red tape, newer regulations and the replacement of agencies like the Jordan Investment Board and the Development and Free Zones Commission under a new agency — the Jordan Investment Commission directly linked with the Prime Minister and the Royal Court.

A new ‘investment window’ is replacing the ‘one-stop shop’ that used to exist under the Jordan Investment Board, and which is more dynamic than the Investment Encouragement Law of 1995.

The Director-General of JIC, Montasir Oqla, says this gives flexibility to look at different investment packages and establish one’s venture in less than 30 days. The JIC came about through endless discussions and listening to the different voices which had been saying they had faced extensive red tape. They had even been accused of corruption as was the case with one company from the UAE as reported by the Jordanian media.

The ‘investment window’ is expected to come into effect in April — investors are likely to find such bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo will have been swept away.

Marwan Asmar is a commentator based in Amman. He has long worked in journalism and has a PhD in Political Science from Leeds University in the UK.