Pensions and retirement savings are a problem facing not only Jordan, but nearly every country around the globe.

Here are the four issues facing Jordan’s Social Security Corporation (SSC for short).

1. Problem #1: Demographics

This is the most important one: birth rates are falling, people are getting married later in life (if at all), and retirees are living longer.

By 2070, it is estimated that the total number of retirees will balloon to 3.3 million while the number of workers will stagnate.1

Basically there are not enough newcomers entering the system to become workers and pay for the retirees (yes it sounds kind of like a Ponzi scheme, but with a caveat2).

2. Problem #2: Early Retirees

Early retirement is a big topic nowadays. Some deserved it; others simply found a rational way out. It is a bit like the prisoner’s dilemma: what makes sense for the individual can end up being bad for everyone collectively.

This is not the first mess baby-boomers are handing down to the next generation and it is not unique to Jordan.3

The issue with the early retirement is that it accounts for the majority of the SSC’s expenses. Early retirement payouts were 989.1 million JODs in 2023 compared to old age payouts of 508.4 million JODs. Early retirees accounted for 55% of 2023 expenses while old age accounted for only 28%

The 444 million JODs in “excess” is what goes into the Social Security Investment Fund to be invested (which I will elaborate more in another post). It is estimated that by 2030, there will be no more surplus and that ALL of SSC’s income will go towards paying for retirement benefits ++.

3. Problem #3: The Informal Sector

The number is still unclear. Some estimates put the number of informal-sector workers between 500,000 and 1,500,000.

And this is the number that is distorting the unemployment rate in Jordan (more here).

We have foreigners working in Jordan, with/without a work permit, who are also not registered in the SSC.

It’s even a problem in Japan

We also have Jordanians working but not registered with the SSC, which is why the Government is pushing to integrate informal-sector workers, starting with delivery drivers working on apps4

4. Problem #4: Trust Issue

The fact that we constantly hear statements like “الضمان مفلس” did not come out of nowhere. There is clearly a lack of trust between workers and the SSC/SSIF. And this should not be the case: a worker’s job is to focus on their work, while the SSC/SSIF should focus on properly managing people’s pension funds.

The SSC should work on rebuilding its credibility and regaining the public’s trust, especially those who are hesitant or have already left:

Now to the Solutions

-First of all, Jordan is in a relatively better (🧿) position when it comes to demographics, having 40% of its population under the age of 19. That is roughly twice the size of the current workforce, meaning Jordan has a huge cohort about to enter the labor market. And the SSC shouldn’t waste such an opportunity.

-Voluntary subscriptions: there is an estimated 500,000 to 1,000,000 Jordanians working/living abroad. There is also the informal sector. The SSC should make it easy and seamless to register online, via their app, without friction. At 50 JODs/month, we are talking of a minimum of 300 million in additional income.

-50 JODs/month for voluntary subscribers might seem like a significant amount, but I’m hoping the contribution could also create an incentive for people to increase their earned income whether by seeking better-paying jobs, negotiating higher salaries, working more, or developing additional sources of income. In that sense, it could potentially act as a catalyst for higher wages, which I see as one of the fundamental weaknesses behind our lacklustre economy.

-Marketing: the SSC needs to market its benefits and let everyone know about them (maternity leave, injury, disability etc.)

Maybe they are already working on an outreach campaign aimed at Gen Z

-Communication: the government has a dedicated Ministry of Govrntment Communication, which, in my opinion, is failing miserably at communicating with the public.

That’s why the SSC should consider having an AI chatbot agent on its app or website that could answer any question related to potential or current subscribers. Call it something like DamanAI (pronounced like Gemini).

DamanAI could answer anything from basic to complicated questions, in as many languages as possible: “How long until I retire?” “How much will I get if I retire tomorrow?” etc.

All of the above contributes towards better customer service. Better customer service = more subscribers.

Further reading and watching:

Jor Actuarial Report 11th 20250312 1

3.17MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

المخلص التنفيذي للدراسة الاكتوارية 11 25 2 2026

454KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

1

There is so much to talk regarding the reasons as to why birth rates are falling, not just in the developed world, but in Jordan and everywhere, from academic research to conspiracy theories (my favourites are: how Sweden let COVID run wild in old age homes to get rid of old people or how Austria allegedly delayed its smoking ban for the same reason or how France doesn’t want to install Air conditioning units in hospitals). Or watch Connor Leahy here:

A Havenstein Moment.

Everyone loves credit!

Hard to believe the year is over 58% done. Normally I like to just present stuff and let you draw your own conclusions, but today I’ll add a few random thoughts…

Read more

a month ago · 79 likes · 24 comments · Rudy Havenstein

3

An example from France

“War is natural”
Henri Bergson 1

Alfred Nobel, famous for inventing dynamite, decided to rewrite his legacy after reading his own obituary. The newspaper had mistakenly reported his death instead of that of his brother Ludvig Nobel, branding Alfred “the merchant of death.”

Even before that, he had always considered himself a pacifist. He supported activists working to prevent wars between nations, even financially backing Bertha von Suttner, the woman he was trying to woo, who politely friend-zoned him and then went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize.

Curiously, Nobel didn’t see explosives merely as instruments of destruction, but as a way to prevent even greater destruction through deterrence, a line of thinking that would later become the Cold War doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Despite all the goodwill, donations, conferences, and wishful thinking, the First World War, then simply called the Great War, couldn’t be prevented.

Then the pacifists returned, once again trying to reason with humanity. Most famously, Albert Einstein’s 1932 letter to Sigmund Freud, Why War?, and Freud’s equally unsettling reply.2

I also recommend reading George Bernard Shaw's reflections from that era, which managed to cover both periods:

I hope cooler heads prevail this time and that things don’t escalate to the point of mutual destruction and devastation. Restraint is needed, not only by the weaker side, but especially by the stronger one, because only the stronger party has the ability to restrain everyone else.

Before World War II, there were endless talks, books, conferences, declarations, and intellectual debates. None of them stopped the tsunami of destruction.

I genuinely pray this time is different.

The current path of slow degradation is unsustainable economically, politically, and, more importantly, humanly.

I don’t want to sound like the halftime entertainer who only appears when the rockets stop falling, but I’ve been busy and will finally be publishing the long-overdue posts, including my thoughts on the Social Security Corporation.

I hope you won’t be reading this from a nuclear wasteland.

Another sector where we can observe a measurable impact is the cleaning and solvents industry.

To examine this, I looked at two companies listed on the Amman Stock Exchange:

-ICAG, a local manufacturer,

and

-ACDT, which owns a 40% stake in Henkel Jordan.

What do the financial statements tell us?

Henkel Jordan is 40% owned by Premier Business (ticker: ACDT)

Henkel Jordan distributes well-known brands including Persil, Fa, Schwarzkopf, and others.

Persil became one of the detergent brands widely targeted by boycott campaigns on Jordanian social media after late 2023. How did this translate into sales?

The timing suggests a significant impact following the boycott campaign. Since 2023, sales have fallen from an annual average of around 10 million JOD before 2022 to roughly 4 million JOD in 2025. Although the company has not publicly explained1 this decline, the timing closely coincides with the boycott campaign. Despite many consecutive profitable years, the company reported losses in the last two years.

In end of June 2026, Premier Business announced that it would sell its 40% stake in Henkel Jordan for €4 million.

Unsurprisingly, ACDT’s share price has more than doubled since the beginning of the year. The next question is what management intends to do with the proceeds: distribute them as dividends then wind down the company (as happened with the Jordan Match Factory), or reinvest the capital into a new business?

If Henkel Jordan lost customers, the obvious next question is whether Jordanian manufacturers benefited. Did consumers actually switch to locally produced alternatives?

One way to explore this question is by looking at The Industrial Commercial & Agricultural Company (ticker: ICAG).

CAG manufactures and sells its own brands, including Oryx, Maza, Zein, and others.

Did sales pick up since 2023?

No. Sales have remained relatively flat since 2021. What is fascinating, however, is that they surged immediately after COVID during the “Made in Jordan” campaign. Another interesting point is that more than 42% of ICAG’s sales come from exports.2

There isn’t much reliable data from the Department of Statistics on local manufacturing (the industrial survey has many missing figures, which I hope will be addressed in the upcoming census), making it difficult to determine whether other local manufacturers experienced stronger growth.

So, was the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign successful in Jordan?

In my opinion, it depends on what success is being measured against.

First, the organisers of the BDS movement publicly identify the companies they encourage people to boycott.

Henkel is not one of those companies.

Back in 2023, many social media influencers encouraged people to boycott Persil and Ariel, even though neither brand appeared on the official BDS target list. (Ariel was sometimes mentioned online because its name was associated with Ariel Sharon, while others claimed its logo resembled the Star of David.)
When a boycott expands beyond clearly defined targets, it can become less effective and may have unintended consequences.
For a boycott campaign to be effective, it needs to be focused, accurate and well targeted.
Persil was targeted and appears to have been hit hard in Jordan despite not being on the official BDS list. One could argue that it became collateral damage.3

Boycotting is one of the few forms of economic protest available to consumers, but for it to be effective it needs to be deliberate rather than haphazard.

What does appear to have worked was the “Made in Jordan” campaign during the COVID period, and I think more could be done in that direction to help Jordanian industry grow.
To briefly summarise a 2024 GIZ assessment of the sector (page 24), it identified soaps and detergents as a promising Jordanian growth sector. However, the report also noted that the industry remains fragmented, with many companies struggling to achieve economies of scale.

Local producers of soaps and detergents face many challenges, including lower brand recognition, competing on quality, high energy costs, and other structural constraints.

For consumers, it’s not just about switching to a local brand and avoiding foreign names (especially since many foreign brands are or were manufactured in Jordan or neighbouring countries such as Egypt and the GCC).

Ultimately, it’s about supporting brands that can compete on both quality and price.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of local brands (this isn’t sponsored and contains no affiliate links):

• Wales

• Mosaic

• Layan

• Madar

• Hygex

• Battel

• Spartan

• Farmasi

• GIG

• Frescal

• Anwar

• HiGeen

• Fine

• Juman

• Aqua Therapy

• Dr Mak

• Nabulsi Soap

Personally, I look for a high-quality brand at a good price, but I also care about whether the company is environmentally conscious. Jordan does not yet have widespread Green or B Corp-style labelling, but it seems that such certifications and standards may become more common in the near future.

1

From their 2024 Annual Report (no boycott explicitly mentioned)

“The S-1 reads like a science-fiction novel”

Here is the S-1 ‘Big Short’ investor Steve Eisman is talking about: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000162828026036936/spaceexplorationtechnologi.htm

It’s a business that wants to mine asteroids, build bases on the Moon and Mars, and claims its TAM (total addressable market) is more than double U.S. GDP, with most of that opportunity supposedly coming from artificial intelligence.

Its current operations are reportedly losing money in their core businesses, namely rocket launches and xAI. The only profitable side is the satellite internet business Starlink.

I recommend watching Patrick Boyle’s detailed breakdown of what’s going on:

Now with the IPO fast approaching, being more than 4x oversubscribed (supposedly), I want to mention my personal investment thesis: this process appears designed, at least in part, to personally benefit Elon Musk.

Let’s put the puzzle pieces together.

-In November of 2025, Tesla shareholders voted in favour of the $1 trillion pay package for Elon Musk:

The bonus wasn’t paid immediately. Musk needs to achieve aggressive milestones before receiving any of it, including: 20 million Tesla cars sold, 1 million robots, 10 million self driving subscriptions, $400 billion in core profit1. The most critical of these is lifting Tesla’s overall market value to $8.5 trillion from its current level around $1.4 trillion.2

-After aligning closely with the Trump administration in 2025 and co-leading DOGE, Musk appears to have secured regulatory flexibility to take SpaceX public under unusually tight share supply conditions. That limited float would naturally support a higher initial share price.

-Now here comes the important missing piece: the next logical step would be a merger or acquisition between Tesla and SpaceX. This scenario has been speculated about by many investors and analysts, with some even referring to the merged entity as “X.” I believe it is likely — and arguably necessary — if Musk is to fully unlock his Tesla compensation. I'm not predicting a merger will happen — I'm saying that if one is announced, that should set off alarm bells. 🚨

Tesla has struggled in recent years with sales plateauing since 2023. Notably, its biggest customer in certain segments has been SpaceX itself.

This wouldn’t be the first time Musk has pursued such a strategy: anyone remember the SolarCity and Tesla merger from exactly ten years ago?

To quote the abstract from this Harvard Business School piece: “Concerns were raised over possible conflicts of interest, given that Musk owned over 20% of the stock, and sat on the board of directors of both companies. The viability of the merger was also questioned given that neither Tesla nor SolarCity had ever been profitable.” https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=53652

So the merger/acquisition between SpaceX and Tesla might be what gets Musk the $1 trillion pay package from Tesla.

So the merger or acquisition could be what ultimately delivers Musk the $1 trillion pay package from Tesla. With majority voting control, he could help steer the transaction. That’s how I see the broader playbook unfolding. (Yes, I’m simplifying, but the pattern is recognizable.)

Déjà Vu

I know Elon Musk has passionate fans who see him as the real-life “Iron Man” — the mad genius taking humanity to the next level.

I hope I’m allowed to remain skeptical and call this IPO what it largely appears to be: a sophisticated capital raise that could primarily benefit insiders at the expense of new public investors, including pension funds chasing growth.

Who is right? I personally worry this could play out as described and hope that I am wrong.

Only time will tell.

The question I constantly ask myself: if he does manage to claim that $1 trillion and become the world’s first trillionaire, what comes next? Will he build his own country and declare himself emperor, or simply retreat to one of his space bases?

I see clear echoes of WeWork here — particularly its infamous S-1 that claimed it would “elevate the world’s consciousness.” The biggest losers then were SoftBank and its fund, backed by sophisticated Gulf investors who might have been better served sticking to real projects here on Earth rather than fabricated visions in the sky.

Just for everyone rushing to become a SpaceX investor: don’t bet the house. Caveat emptor.

[Note: I asked Grok from xAI to edit this piece… some derogatory remarks about Musk were requested to be removed]

Can we simply add up the total value of shoes and skyscrapers into monetary aggregates such as GDP?1

A decade ago, Italy wanted to add prostitution and drugs to its GDP calculation to obviously inflate the number.

Italy’s reasoning is simple: it was hurt after the Euro area crisis in 2011. GDP fell and they needed to issue new debt. The Euro area has strict laws on debt service to GDP (how much a country is allowed to borrow and pay in terms of interest to debt relative to GDP) so Italy found a way to increase its GDP.

We all know the Italian mafia has 2 sets of books, one for themselves and one for the taxman, but in this case, Italy is not hiding its number but revealing a hidden part of the economy which should legitimately be there.

Jump 12 years and Jordan’s GDP has been revised upwards. We didn’t add any illegal economic activity to the calculation. The Department of Statistics (DoS) revised the number by simply expanding the statistics coverage.

How does Jordan benefit from this revision? We too have a strict law that states we are not allowed to borrow more than 80% of GDP. By revising upwards, this allows the government to technically borrow more by raising the ceiling.

I want to briefly argue 2 things with some fun examples: GDP is never accurate and the debt law should be amended.

I- Inaccurate GDP calculations

There are 3 ways. The most famous is this one :

This is GDP calculated from the consumption side (how much of the production is consumed in the economy) using the equation: Consumption + Investment + Government Expenditure + Exports - Imports

In Jordan, the DoS primarily uses the value added approach to estimate GDP. And the GDP number is done by census every period of time and for yearly changes, we get calculated estimates.

The good thing is that now we have Fotara implemented in Jordan, we can get a better idea of payments and transactions and we could get a more accurate number and need fewer estimates.

We also have to remember that it doesn’t really matter if we add prostitution or drugs like Italy because at the end of the day, the drug dealers and pimps will spend their money in rent, clothes, food, cigarettes, fuel. Whatever was ‘produced’ by them and exchanged for cash which will in turn become consumption in the economy. The GDP revision simply makes the country appear richer on paper without building a new factory, hiring a new worker or exporting an additional product. The revision changes the measurement, not the reality. Italy didn't become richer overnight; it simply started counting more of what was already there.

Also not everything that is produced/consumed is exchanged for money and therefore is not calculated in the GDP numbers.

For example, GDP never included house work like doing the dishes or cooking because that work is not exchanged for money (or those cherries you got for $0 from your tree thanks to free rain, air and sunshine). House chores were not included in GDP numbers since economists, like Simon Kuznets, who came up with the calculations in the 1930s, saw that it was mostly done by ‘housewives’ and their activities were not exchanged for money. But during that same period, Margaret Reid published Economics of Household Production in 1934 proposing the idea of the “1/3 rule”. That means whatever product or service is produced at home, if it were done by someone else for a fee, then that product/service can be estimated to be around 1/3 of the value of money. So if I were to hire someone to clean the house for 30 JODs but instead I do it myself, I would have produced 10 JODs into the economy. Or if I make 1 kg of shushbarak at home, and it is being sold at 6 JODs/kg, I produced 2 JOD’s worth.

That’s why GDP numbers (as Kuznets himself rightly pointed out) have their limits and that they can be way higher.

Fun fact: if you take the world of hacking and cybercrime, its ‘GDP’ is estimated at around $10.5 trillion, making the 3rd largest economy on earth. And that estimate came before the advent of AI hacking and Claude Mythos.

II- Why GDP doesn’t matter for debt.

GDP is an interesting number to use for macroeconomists. It can be used to compare how much %GDP is spent on education and use it as a metric for comparing with other countries. Or get military expenditures as a % of GDP. Tax revenue as % of GDP etc. Or compare it historically for the same country like comparing debt to GDP for Jordan from 1989 and how it fell and then rose again.

And Debt to GDP is not all doom and gloom. Look at how Greece how it reduced its debt (which can be done by either/or growing GDP with more production or inflation, or paying off debt).

But since GDP numbers are not fully accurate, it can be seen as dangerous to put into law a limit to our debt based on it. Our debt is a number that is accurately calculated. GDP is not.

And that creates a problem when we have a public debt law that puts a ceiling based on that inaccurate number despite the good intention of limiting financial risk.

My suggestion: use something other than GDP.

I mean when a person goes to a bank and asks for a loan, the banker doesn’t ask for how much they produce, but how much they spend/earn + what assets you have. And banks usually give out a non-secured (not backed by any asset) loan amounting to x times their salary (the ‘x’ depends on credit rating, sector of employment, years of employment, spending habits etc.)

In my opinion, the law should be amended to an equation like this:

Jordan’s total debt is limited to X times budget expense + debt service should be Y% of total government expense + total NET debt shouldn’t exceed Z% of GDP.

At the moment, the government is expected to spend 13 billion JODs in 2026. Our GDP at the end of 2025 was 43.6 billion JODs. The debt (excluding SSIF) reached 36.65 billion JODs. Our Debt/expense ratio is ~2.8 (in other words our debt is nearly 3 times our annual budget) and our interest payment is 17% of total expense. Compare with the US whose debt/expense ratio is ~5.3 and its interest payments are 13%. While Germany has a debt/expense ratio of ~1.1 and interest payments at 8% of total expenditure.

Another small issue to address: Net debt vs Gross debt.

Net debt = Gross debt - Liquid assets2

Take Japan for example. Japan’s >200% debt to GDP looks alarming if we take Gross Debt/GDP alone. If we take Net Debt/GDP, Japan’s debt becomes way lower and can be seen as manageable.

In conclusion, it’s not the size (quantity) that matters, but quality of wealth. And our ability to borrow to help our economy grow shouldn’t be limited by an inaccurate number.

Jordan's debt should be limited by our ability to service and manage it, not by a statistical estimate. GDP remains a useful economic indicator. It simply should not be the only ruler we use when writing debt laws.

In the end, this is what matters:

Albert Einstein

The joke in academia goes that if you want to study chemistry, you end up doing lots of physics. If you want to study physics, you end up doing lots of mathematics.

And if you want to study finance, you end up reading a lot of law and legal material.

The field of finance is not just about numbers, it’s mostly contractual law. Every financial product, be it a loan, a mortgage, a derivative, a bond, is ultimately just a contract (with a bit of math in it). That’s all it is.1 In a way, everything is a contract.

Same applies to the insurance sector: it’s all about a contract between two parties agreeing to pay a sum in case some event happens (like death, illness, fire, accident, shipping etc.). In a way, anything can be insured2 (if both parties agree to it).

The reason I bring up insurance is that I saw this video a while back where the podcaster Mahmoud al-Halabi asked an insurance lawyer how to rank the best insurance companies in Jordan, and how to determine whether an insurance company might go bankrupt in the future and fail to fulfil its claims. His concern makes sense, especially after the collapse of several insurance firms in Jordan following COVID, which forced the Central Bank of Jordan to step in.

I was disappointed with the expert’s answer, especially because the Amman Stock Exchange was never mentioned. There is more transparency in the Amman Stock Exchange than in most other institutions in this country, and very few people take advantage of it. There is also a surprising amount of interesting information hidden in company disclosures, not just in the financial statements.

Here are the earnings for the insurance sector:

So how does one rank which insurance company is the best for them:

-Check the company’s financial history first (assuming the auditors did their job properly). If the numbers are solid, that is a good start.3

-Ask friends and family about their experiences with those companies.

-Call the company directly. Usually, a company with good customer service is well run overall.

-Check online reviews

-Look for extra perks. For example, for health insurance, are they part of NatHealth?

Most importantly, before signing with any insurance agreement, make sure to read all the terms and conditions (thanks to AI, this can be done quickly). And for car insurance in Jordan, make sure you get accidental rocket coverage.

I’ll talk more next time about the tiny size of the insurance sector and its potential in Jordan especially in investments: for those curious, look at how Warren Buffett made his early breakthrough in investing in insurance companies.

This was seen as such a pivotal moment in history, where a small nation stood up against large imperial forces, that it was celebrated worldwide and was seen as a victory not only for the Japanese, but for every colonised country that was humiliated and suffered for decades or even centuries.

Iraqi poet Maarouf al-Rusafi commemorated the battle in a famous poem:

سَعَروها في البحر حرباً ضروساً تأكل المالَ نارُها والنفوسا

قرب توشيما قد تصادم أسطولان أردى اليابان فيه الروسا

يوم طوغو دها بأسطوله الروس قتالاً وكان يوماً عبوسا

فحَداها بوارجاً تملأ البحر وقاراً طوراً وطوراً بُوسا1

It goes without a doubt that what Iran managed to achieve in the last 60 days was exceptional. No matter who you cheer for, it is clear that Iran won the first round.2

French Historian Fernand Braudel famously wrote in his book The Mediterranean:

“The master of the seas is the master of wealth”.

Iran found out that the Strait of Hormuz is its nuclear weapon and source of wealth and the US is no longer the navy superpower in the region (for now?).

Now Trump sent a notice to Congress saying he is finished with the conflict. The reason: he has a 60 day deadline for war without Congressional approval.

But his notice is a ruse. That means he can restart at any time for another 60 days.

Let’s see if we will actually get a round 2, and what will happen.

To be honest, we don’t even need AI. Real footage like this says it all:

We are polluting our homeland, this fragile land that sustains us, this blessed, holy land.

Anyways…

Upcoming posts:

-Brief on insurance sector

-Arab Space Program (Game 3) 🚀

-How GDP is calculated in Jordan

-Trump’s second-order impact on Jordan

In my day, in my own country, this money was collected from imports, and the citizen imagined that the foreign importer paid it, and it made him comfortable to think so; whereas, in fact, it was paid by the American people, and was so equally and exactly distributed among them…

Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court

During Twain’s time, tariffs on imports were the federal government’s primary source of revenue. For much of the 1880s and 1890s, the U.S. government actually ran a budget surplus.

Now compare that to Donald Trump’s first year of his second term. I’ll let the headlines speak for themselves.

So far, from January until November 2025, the value of 🇯🇴 exports to the United States of America fell by 5.46%, barely reaching 2 billion JODs. I will cover more about the impact on trade and USAID in another post.

Supernormal Returns

Uncertainty, tariffs, and the trade deficit

This Thursday the Census Bureau will release international trade data for the month of December. It will show where imports, exports, and the trade balance landed in the first calendar year of President Trump’s return to office and renewed trade war. It’s a good opportunity to review what tariffs will—and won’t—do when it comes to America’s trade balanc…

Read more

7 months ago · 4 likes · Erica York

Gustav von Schmoller (1838–1917) wrote about how periods of open trade give way to mercantile imperialism in the late nineteenth century, when empires consolidated economic activity within their own political spheres, trading primarily with allies and dependencies. It seems this could be where we are headed today.

Giving Reason to all the Chaos

I have a theory on how to make sense of all President Trump’s crazy antics (and I didn’t even mention the Epstein files, pulling out of NATO, the FED, Iran, his grift1 etc.) and oddly enough, it’s found in film reviews.

Take Passengers. A reviewer once argued the film would have been a 10/10 if they had simply reversed the order of sequences: Jennifer Lawrence’s character wakes up first, and only halfway through do we flash back to discover that Chris Pratt woke up before her, and chose to wake her. Same story, completely different impact.

Slavoj Žižek made a similar point about V for Vendetta. He was disappointed with the ending and wished for one thing: that when the mask is finally removed, the person behind it would turn out to be none other than the dictator himself. The revolutionary and the tyrant, one and the same. A leader who pushed his people to the breaking point so they would rise up, fight back, and free themselves. A hidden, self-sacrificing hero.

That’s my theory behind Trump’s relentless demeaning of the American people: he’s trying to wake them up. And let’s not forget, Trump is known to take on secret identities.

If this isn’t true, then we really do have a problem on our hands.
I wish Robin Williams were still alive to give us some comedic relief, as he did during the W Bush years.

(“If I only had a brain” - Late Night with Conan O’Brien, May 14 2002)

1

This expression is also found in many shops around the country in the form of الدين ممنوع. For non-Arabic speakers, and without the correct diacritics (َ ِ ُ ّ ْ ), it may read as ‘Religion is forbidden’. It actually translates to: Debt is forbidden; meaning shops don’t want customers (including regulars) to buy goods on credit and that all purchases need to be settled immediately.

The quote above is taken from the “auto”biography of the founder of the biggest banking institution in Jordan, the Arab Bank. Just as a Saudi friend recommended it to me, I highly recommend our dear readers to get their hands on a copy.

Abdul-Hamid Shoman uttered that expression when he emigrated from Palestine to the United States of America more than a century ago at the age of 21. He had only 2 ounces of gold in his pocket (worth $42 at that time). His first job was a door-to-door salesman going around with a large suitcase selling random things from ties to house essentials which he initially bought using those gold coins. When he would sell out and deplete his inventory, he would go back to the warehouse or factory to buy more using his original capital. A warehouse owner once suggested that if Abdul-Hamid Shoman wanted to make more money, he could borrow the extra goods instead of having to buy a limited number. Shoman told him: debt is forbidden.

Shoman’s memoir is another example of a book that could really benefit from a Netflix series adaptation and be brought to a modern audience and make banking sexy again (just as Apple TV+ made gaming sexy with their excellent Tetris movie featuring Robert Maxwell, father of Ghislaine Maxwell).

I digress…

Back to banks in Jordan.

There are a lot of things financial analysts look for in a bank’s yearly earnings such as ROE, capital adequacy ratio, growth (any court cases abroad that could threaten the bank) etc.

What retail investors, especially the average Mo, care about is: how much profit will be paid back if I buy shares of a bank? As in, how much dividends will be paid to shareholders? Or to put differently: how much will a bank pay me to buy their shares?

We see these headlines: one bank announces 40% dividends and the other 12%.

Is it obvious from the headline which bank is paying more than the other?

To keep it simple, the quickest way to understand these numbers is to think of it this way: the percentage represents how much the shareholder gets per share.

For example if I own 100 shares of Arab Bank, I get 40% of 100 which is 40 JODs. If I own 18 shares, I get 7.2 JODs

But the question becomes: what’s the price of an Arab Bank share today if I want to purchase it and get some of that profit distribution.

As of today's market close it is 6.76 JODs/share.

So if I bought 100 shares, I would need 676 JODs in total to get 40 JODs in dividends.

That’s a return of 40/676= 5.92% (known as Dividend yield)

Profits are usually distributed after the Annual General Meeting (AGM) of banks which usually take place between March and April.

5.92% is considered a good return on investment when compared to keeping the money sitting in a bank.

The risk comes later when investors decide to sell those shares after the shareholders meeting as the price can drop by more than the amount made from the profits. That is unless you are a long term holder of shares.

Here is the equation:

Dividend yield = Profit distribution % / Share price

I did a table comparing the different banks and most except 3 have a dividend yield of >5%

Highlighted in yellow are Safwa Islamic and Etihad which will be distributing bonus shares (which complicates the equation a bit).

Overall the banks did pretty well in 2025 with net profits of 1.32 billion JODs (+10.6% compared to 2024)

Don’t forget to always analyse company balance sheets, talk with an analyst before taking any risk.

Happy Investing!

As Schumpeter famously argued, the moment an entrepreneur opens their business, they immediately need to start innovating to stay competitive. Anyone can, at any moment, enter the market and offer the same product/service at a better price.

This is the case with the Telecoms sector in Jordan: every 2 years, when it is time to renew the internet subscription contract, I simply start scouting for better deals and switch if I find better offers. Or if I am a bit lazy, I simply threaten the current service provider about my intention of moving to another and I immediately get a better deal.

This chart that always makes the rounds every few months on social media, shows that it kind of worked for the technology sector:

Unfortunately, this is not the case with gas distribution companies.

Primer

Liquid Petroleum Gas (LPG) as a heating source is the second most used energy source for residential homes in Jordan. But that is for the gas cylinders that are used on gas heaters and for cooking (what we call “Soba”, like this).

LPG (not to be confused with LNG) is also used in central heating systems where a household would have a gas tank that connects to a gas burner/boiler.

Diesel appears to be gaining market share in the chart above, but this trend is misleading. It reflects households moving away from Sobas (small, moveable gas heaters) toward boiler systems that use either gas or diesel.

What I want to focus on here is gas-powered boiler systems, not Sobas. Both gas and diesel boilers work similarly: they draw fuel from a storage tank (filled by a delivery truck) to heat water that circulates through radiators or underfloor heating systems.

From Diesel to Gas

Before we begin, we need to understand why a lot of households are moving away from Diesel and to Gas to heat up their homes.

At current prices from JoPetrol, we have:

Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) at 681.36 JODs/ton

Diesel at 0.645 JODs/L

To be able to compare, we can convert the units to a common energy unit in Giga Joules (GJ), which become:

LPG —> ~14 JODs/GJ

Diesel —> ~17.6 JODs/GJ

Gas is already 20% cheaper than diesel (and has some many other advantages too by being cleaner and having more efficient boilers.)

We can also compare it to other heat sources:

Electricity is ~27 JODs/GJ (at 0.10 JODs/kWh) and if one is using Olive Pomade or Jift (جفت) at 100 JODs/ton, it is ~5 JODs/GJ. Yes, only 5 JODs! 3 times cheaper than gas and diesel. Unfortunately we are not manufacturing safe and efficient boilers/furnaces to fully benefit from it.

Gas seems like the obvious choice for many customers, and yet the switch is not as simple as it seems.

For safety reasons, gas storage tanks cannot be placed anywhere like diesel tanks can. Since the gas is highly condensed to liquid form, it needs to be placed in a highly pressurised container. For everyone’s safety and convenience, one large storage container is built and shared by the whole building, regardless of the number of apartments. The tank must be placed in a designated safe location, and each individual customer connects to it with a gas meter installed to monitor consumption.

This is where the problem starts: customers cannot refill their tank using another service provider. Customers are stuck with one distributor forever. And unlike telecom companies where installation is often subsidized, most of the installation costs (pipes and tanks) are charged directly to the client.

Worse yet, even though gas is cheaper at the wholesale level, it is sold to customers with a 20-30% markup over market price. JoPetrol sells LPG at 680 JODs/ton, but customers buy it from distributors at >800 JODs/ton.

Compare that with diesel, where customers can order from any service provider to fill up the tank and the price remains close to market rates. Customers only pay a small premium for the convenience of home delivery.

Anti-competitive

Without alternatives, private gas distributors hold monopolistic control over their small customer base (as if an unregulated public utility), raising potential concerns under article 6 (d) of the competition law.

I'm not trying to cut off anyone's livelihood (اقطع رزقتهم). But if gas is the future for heating, these companies need business models built on service quality and fair pricing, not customer lock-in.

Nothing good lasts forever.

Future Switch from LPG to LNG

The Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources (MEMR) conducted a 2022 study exploring the transition from LPG and diesel to liquid natural gas (LNG) for heating homes, as LNG is seen as much cheaper than most other fuel sources.

In fact, LNG is as cheap as jift. The challenge lies in creating a gas distribution network via pipelines (as Egypt has done) to connect every home to the grid. While such infrastructure requires significant upfront investment, the long-term benefits (lower heating costs and energy security) make it worthwhile.

Study can be downloaded directly from MEMR’s website.

From Gas to Sun ☀️

In the meantime, as we are still in the first and coldest Sa’ed of the 50 days of winter, It is always better for customers to choose one primary heating source (LPG, LNG, diesel, jift, or electric boiler) and supplement it with solar heating. Even on the coldest days, the sun still shines and brings in free heat to help and cut down on costs. Customers can even take it a step further by adding solar photovoltaic panels to generate electricity.

Jordan has been blessed with enough rain and sun to meet our needs; we just need to use our minds to take advantage of it all.

إن اللهَ إذا أنعم على عبدٍ نعمةً أحبَّ أن يرى أثرَ نعمتِه عليه

“Beatus ille qui procul negotiis”

Horace, Epods II

Lucky is the one who has never got into business

Introduction

A famous electronics retailer recently went bust in Jordan. Their shops had their doors sealed shut (مشمع) by the courts and creditors (mostly banks) went after the guaranteed assets of the owners. The main issue is that this famous ‘genetic’ shop didn’t own most of the products it sold. It operated on a consignment basis for third party sellers of toys, books, PC gadgets etc. Now these suppliers are having trouble getting their stuff back. And the company is somewhat stuck in a state of limbo, where there is no one really in charge to close down the company (تصفية اختيارية), no creditor forcing the company to liquidate (تصفية اجبارية), no legal person for the suppliers to approach to get their products back.

I am not here to bash on the owners or expose them: on the contrary, I believe this story can be a business case study (maybe they should go on tour giving lectures to business schools for a speaker’s fee to talk about their experience) that can teach a lot to future business owners in Jordan about managerial mistakes as well as the shortcomings of the Jordanian corporate law system and the current inadequacy of the bankruptcy law in the country. I mean the bankruptcy law clearly states that a company can apply for bankruptcy protection (قانون الاعسار) only when they know within 6 months in advance1 if they will not be able to pay their liabilities (salaries, taxes, loans etc.). Habibi! most SMEs don’t forecast 6 months in advance; a lot live on a month to month or day to day basis.

Anyways we need to talk and learn from these failed companies2 so here goes:

Definition

The conventional definition of a Zombie company is one that can only pay the interest of its debts and not the principal and would therefore need to constantly borrow (or reschedule) to survive. Zombie companies became famous in Japan during the 90s (during low interest rate regime) and it spread worldwide after 2008.

In Jordan, zombie companies are ones that have passed this stage; they are in fact no longer operating, do not have any acting manager, and are accumulating interest on old dues (loans, taxes, social security payments). They are alive (registered and open for business) and dead (not trading, no employees) at the same time. Even shareholders and managers of LLCs (limited liability companies) become zombies3 when creditors impose a travel ban or freeze assets until the courts finalise the cases (which could take many years). Assets of these zombie companies also get stuck in purgatory: cars and trucks rot away while theirs licenses do not renew, buildings become abandoned a new hot spot for drug dealers etc.

Also worth remembering that a liquidation (تصفية) is the process of dissolution of a company whereby a liquidator is appointed and examines the assets (what the company owns) in order to pay as much as possible the liabilities (what the company owes). A liquidator is paid a fee for this process until the company is closed down. On the other hand, bankruptcy protection is where assets of the company are protected from creditors until the management of the company come up with a new plan to save the company and pay the creditors.

Problem with the Companies Control Department (CCD)

2 years ago, I wrote about the mismanaged case of the beneficial owner situation that caused 80,000 companies to stop trading at the CCD.

As mentioned, the Beneficial Ownership Law came as a foreign idea that wasn’t properly moulded to meet local customs (and like foreign plants they became invasive species destroying the habitat)

But the CCD seemed to have learned and made the beneficial owner application an online thing (I recommended a 1 click process, they did it in 6 steps but still better).

Their messaging should still have been more professional though, like this:

And they still should learn to fix any broken links :

Of the 80 thousand companies that were frozen back then, around 50 thousand have managed to fix their situation. Exactly 31,582 LLCs were struck off the CCD’s record in December 2025 (around 32.6 thousand in all of 2025).

Combine that with the 7,604 newly registered companies in 2025, and we would be in the negative. The net number of companies in Jordan has gone down instead of up, erasing 5 years worth of ‘progress’

However the CCD did not advertise this number as they did on the more positive news of the record breaking number of newly registered companies in 2025. The CCD shouldn’t be ashamed about it though. This is a routine clean up. The CCD did what most computers do to operate better: removing unwanted temporary cache files. But admitting that only 7000 new companies and 30,000 were struck off would show that the country is not moving forward and growing per the economic vision.

What’s worse, imagine if the CCD decided to take all 32 thousand companies to liquidation instead of a quick deletion. They would need to appoint 32,000 liquidators. One also has to remember that they will need to put out advertisements on newspapers for each liquidation which would cost a few million. They took the necessary road that is quickest and cheapest.

There are still, in my estimate, another 15 to 20 thousand that could be struck off or liquidated soon for reasons other than the Beneficial owner issue, but I won’t bet on the timing or number as the CCD can decide to postpone such orders and give these companies a chance at recovery. Thankfully we do not have those gambling sites betting on any political or economic event in a country like Polymarket or Kalshi.

Problems within the market

Now to look at the main public companies that are on the edge of becoming or have already become Zombies (selected few of many4):

WOOD

JWICO is a familiar name in Jordan. It has been suffering a lot recently despite the promise of many big projects in Saudi Arabia. Problem: Accumulated operational losses. Negative equity of -3 million JODs (which is an automatic trigger for liquidation). Paid 600k JODs in interest alone and had one its shareholder come with a $1 million loan bailout. In my opinion, they entered the black hole debt trap and if they don’t find a solution soon, their services would degrade even more leading to more unhappy customers, fewer sales etc. I could write more about it in another post. JWICO is a zombie in the traditional sense, not in the Jordanian one.

JOPP & PRES

I covered Al Rai newspaper before here. Al Dustoor newspaper is slightly in a better situation. But they are zombies with negative equity and loans/debts mostly to their biggest shareholder: the Social Security Investment Fund. One solution would be to merge both (have one of them be distributed for free at bus stops in the afternoon). Or a new company emerges that buys off all the assets like the printing presses (or what is left of them), the archives, the ‘brand name’, the contracts with well-known journalists etc. and lets the old companies die off in peace. Same as JWICO for both.

JOST

Jordan Steel wasn’t granted protection and will have its assets (the steel mill) be sold off at auction. Question to the bank that just did this: who is going to buy the old equipment and machinery of a steel mill?

I’m surprised that the company wasn’t saved or acquired as Jordan and the region are expected to have loads of new projects on the horizon (Gaza and Syria reconstruction, Amra etc.). Even cement company Lafarge (ticker: JOCM) was recently acquired by 2 Cypriot based companies. Jordan Steel is about to become a zombie.

WIVA
Winter Valley (which I covered a bit here) is doing its best to save itself from its creditors by suspending execution cases (sort of like in a bankruptcy protection). It’s a mess and management should be swift in taking the right decision to save itself. About to be become a zombie.

The trend for a lot of companies is that they do not have time to file for bankruptcy protection or did and had their applications rejected.

There are some exceptions to the above. The 2 companies to watch that have filed for bankruptcy protection that were granted by the court:

RUMM RUM tourist company is a competitor of JETT buses and also owns a few hotels that they just lost to a creditor. It wasn’t able to meet its dues and yet the judge approved the filing for protection. JOPI Jordan Pipes is another surprising example of this and I commend the lawyers/judges in doing the right thing.

Lawyers out there should read the court decision for RUMM’s bankruptcy application as it can be used as precedent:

Rumm Court Decision Bankruptcy

1.17MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Liquidating or applying for bankruptcy is not as easy as the ex-minister claims:

Solutions

-Term limits: Liquidation of companies shouldn’t take more than 3 to 5 years: I mean look at Petra Bank. It is still being liquidated today, and it started in 1990. 36 years for a liquidation process and a liquidator still appointed and supposedly receiving fees. This should stop. If liquidation reaches its maximum term, a new liquidator would be appointed to investigate, supervise the process, and speed it up. A special deal could be struck with court cases that could take an eternity.

-Revision of timing: Bankruptcy law should be revised a little to allow for individuals and companies to file for bankruptcy protection immediately (means they know cash could run out tomorrow or has already and that the court should make a quick decision before the knives multiply on the fallen cow) including for zombie companies stuck in limbo since before the bankruptcy protection law came out in 2018 like CJC. RUMM and JOPI were lucky exceptions.

-Transfer mechanism: Allow shareholders/managers of current zombie companies to transfer assets (contracts, IP, equipment) to a new shell company to continue operations during liquidation process to facilitate transition and keep the business rolling.

Conclusion

We used to make fun of these kinds of videos before COVID (2019 BC). Investors and ordinary citizens like Quteiba desperately wanted to escape Jordan (and some couldn’t due to travel bans, debtor’s jail etc.)

Post-COVID, the government had a wake up call and took the King’s directives seriously in making Jordan more business friendly and cutting the bureaucratic tape. Now a lot government services are done online (and quickly).

Jordan is in fact becoming more business-friendly and is no longer a graveyard for ambitions. The last and current governments are playing the role of gardeners by fostering a safe space and environment for businesses to grow to their full potential (in order to reap the benefits of course). Weeding out the bad ones is also part of the business: zombie companies should either be revived, buried, or extract whatever valuable organs they still have.

The government shouldn’t put their hands in their pockets and think it’s mission accomplished. There is still a lot of gardening work to be done especially when it comes to purging corruption5.

So what’s next? This 👇

The ball is now in the hands of the private sector, and not the public sector. It is up to private businesses and financial institutions, to work together and cooperate (à la Ayn Rand). All parties need to understand that the ball needs to keep rolling. Zombie companies are either in dire need of a cash injection to revive it or a lethal injection to let them rest in peace.

In terms of fresh capital, we need real private equity firms and “Venture Capitalists” (and not coward capitalists6) to look at these failing zombie companies as having the potential to grow and recover.

There is a lot of potential for great businesses to prosper in Jordan (and lots of great deals to be made) and failures should only be seen as stepping stones towards a better chance at future success for entrepreneurs.

If at the end, it doesn’t work out in business, then all is left to do is follow Horace’s advice and go back to working the land (or the garden as in Voltaire’s Candide).

2

3

On Zeno, the founder of Stoicism:

I, like many others, am superstitious when it comes to these signals. If a stock market starts off on a high note on its first day of trading, this would mean a green and prosperous year.

On the 2nd of January 2025, the Amman Stock Exchange was up 1.28% on the day. At the end of the year, value traded for 2025 reached 2.165 billion JODs (+80% compared to 2024) and the General index was a up a whopping 45.12%, ranking it top 13th in the world (Ghana was first and South Korea was second). 45.12% is better than the max 5% you would get leaving your money at the bank! The stock market went from a market cap of 17.65 billion JODs at the end of 2024 to 26.493 billion JODs at the end of 2025.

Newspapers were fast to celebrate this news on their front pages.

But I am here to be a party pooper, spoil the fun, and pop the bubble.

We shouldn’t be celebrating this news.

There were no new IPOs in 2025. Value traded was very low compared to 2008.

Net International Investment was actually negative (International Buyers minus International Sellers) at -60.95 million JODs (by end of November 2025)

And the reason the market was up is simply due to low liquidity.

Let me explain briefly what low liquidity means:

Let’s take a company like Siniora (ticker SNRA) and look at its order book.

This is not an unknown company. This is a well known brand in the market. And yet its order book looks really sad.
Now let’s say I buy the 500 shares at 4.72 for 2,360 JODs and that the market closes with no other trades. Since the previous close was 4.50, that means the stock is up 4.8%. The market capitalisation of SNRA would then become 154 million JODs. That means: from 1 trade worth 2.36 thousand JODs, the whole company rose in value by 7 million JODs.

This is a problem that stems from low liquidity in the markets usually called the Turnover ratio (and is an important indicator if a stock/index wants to be listed on the MSCI). The turnover ratio is defined as: Total value of shares traded during a period divided by the average market capitalisation for the period.

The turnover ratio for SNRA was 0.36 in 2025. A very low number (it could be positive for long term investors who know that the stock price won’t be too volatile and move way up or way down).
Other companies had turnover ratios of >100-250 which is also a bad indicator (stock manipulation etc.).

To not lose the reader with boring trading technical data, what I want to say is that the reason the market has gone up was mostly due to the 2 most traded companies:

-Jordan Phosphate (ticker JOPH) total value traded in 2025 was 424 million JODs (including block trades) or 19% of total. Turnover ratio: 7.3

and Arab Bank (ticker ARBK) total value traded in 2025 was 254.7 million JODs or 12% of total. Turnover ratio: 6.96

Jordan Electric Power (JOEP) was 3rd with 240 million JODs but its turnover ratio was >97

But it was really due to JOPH carrying not only the mining sector in the market but the whole market. There was strong correlation but the simple fact is: JOPH was up 64.1% during the year (ARBK was up 49.2%) and its market increase represented 31.4% of the total market cap increase. The same can be said of NVDA (and AAPL before that) and the S&P 500.

Does this call for celebration: yes and no. Yes because we haven’t seen such rise in the markets in a long time (ASE was 13th globally but #1 in the Arab World) and No because it kind of feels superficial. I won’t celebrate until we see a new IPO every quarter in the ASE and at least double the daily trading volume. And this is what I hope we see this year in 2026.

Now how did the Stock Exchange do in the first day of the year 2026: it is down 0.38%

Let’s not lose hope though as market cap still went up 0.05% (I also personally believe the horoscope only when it gives me good news and disregard it when it’s bad news; or switch to Chinese horoscope if it has better prospects).

Why did the market go down after an amazing 2025? Were most investors still on holiday?
I personally blame the recent Venezuelan Operation Absolute Resolve ‘kidnapping’.

Not because a publicly listed Jordanian company’s project, signed 10 years ago to build a residential area for $2.5 billion, could be affected (ticker PHNX - price unchanged).

But because I think that it spooked the market, just like in 2020: the year started with the assassination of Suleimani and we all know how that year unfolded. (Despite having an up day of 0.49% for the first day of 2020, the stock market was down 0.53% after the assassination on the second day of trading on the 5th of January 2020 and the whole market was down 13% for the year).

Gallows Humour (to change the gloomy tone)

Statistics have shown that those who have a New Year's resolution (like going to the gym) usually give it up within 2 weeks.

That day is called Quitting Day (usually takes place on the 2nd Friday of January).

When asked about his New Year’s resolution, Trump’s answer was World Peace.

Is this part of his resolution or another quitter’s day?

Anyways the joke and memes coming out of the recent ‘event’ are too funny to not share so here are a few of my favourite things:

The order proper to a city is being well-manned; to a body, beauty; to a soul, wisdom; to a deed, excellence; and to a discourse, truth—and the opposites of these are disorder.
Gorgias, Ecomium of Helen

This is the state of traffic in Amman:

In sum: a near constant grid lock where you are stuck in traffic going to work and stuck in traffic running away from work with no area being safe.

How can the last Mayors of Amman not see this problem coming and have prepared for it?

I mean even the current mayor was late to his interview on television and acknowledged this problem (in 2019):

Amman (and its surroundings) went from 2.3 million in 2004 to 4.9 million people in 2024 living and working. It is the capital, the political and economic1 heart of the country. And the heart is very congested and is in dire need of immediate action. I keep repeating that the Arabic word used for traffic jam and economic distress is the same: ازمة.

Amman’s finances are a mess. The Municipality topped 1 billion in debt this year. In 2024, it had a deficit of 88 million JODs (~equal to the interest on the loan paid).

We need to solve the traffic problem to kickstart the economic recovery and fix Amman’s financial problem. I mean life at the end is all about movement. Death is the lack of it. We need to fix the traffic jam problem pronto.
What we need are Draconian rules to be strictly enforced if it wants to save the city (and yes our freedom to drive around will be gone but this is all in the good old past now or can be found outside of Amman2).

Here are a few suggestions (with the first being the most important):

Congestion Charge

Under London Mayor Ken Livingstone, a ‘congestion charge’ has been put in place in 2003 where automobiles entering the borders of the city would need to pay a some sort of ‘entrance’ fee. It was a success. And now New York is implementing one.
I suggest having the same in Amman: this will be the financial incentive for Ammanis to reconsider taking a car and consider public transport. Now that the municipality has installed new cameras all across the city, this system can be easily implemented. I would suggest a fee of 1 JOD/day for any car (including foreign ones) coming into town. Ammani residents will get the option of purchasing a monthly congestion charge at 50% off (15 JODs/month in total). Expected additional revenue for the Greater Amman Municipality (GAM): ~200 million JODs per year.3
Those who want to complain about the extra expense need to take into account the cost of a traffic jam: to the people stuck in traffic, to the residents, to the environment, to the whole economy (which is 1.4 billion JODs according to the World Bank).

Better Public Transport

In most ‘developed’ cities, any person can take up their phone and check (on Google maps for example) for routes using public transport to any destination, for e.g. when the next bus will arrive, which route to take, etc. In Amman, the maps do not make sense, the stops have names that are confusing (why not put famous landmarks instead of unknown road names?) and anyone can get lost even if going to nowhere. I’m sure GAM can work on something to make it easier for those who have never been on public transport (including for tourists) to ride on it with confidence and ease.

I personally would prefer it if public transport were free but it would be impossible at this time. What GAM needs to do is bring out a monthly transport card that is affordable . This card can be purchased individually and also by companies to give to their employees (the incentive for companies would be a discount on some fee or another?).

And I am not just talking from personal experience about how bad public transport is and how bad the traffic is. Everyone is complaining about it. It shows in the latest Quality of Life of Amman report:

Better Parking

A lot of the solutions that I hope get implemented need their counterpart to be applied too, a Yin/Yang kind of thing (the Congestion Charge will work well if a good and affordable public transport is available at the same time. People will be encouraged to use public transport and ditch the car if the cost if cheaper).
To stop cars from parking in certain areas, we need strict parking laws (and heavy fines) and at the same time we need parking garages that are affordable. Investors that will build these garages won’t come and spend a lot of money buying expensive real estate for a parking garage if GAM doesn’t implement/ enforce parking laws and penalise without mercy.

Delivery Apps

Force delivery apps to implement a distance charge and/or green charge: if you are ordering from a close by bakery, the app automatically picks a bike or electric scooter instead of a big car (Apps should also allow for users to have a preferred driver). The charge can be added by the distance covered by the drivers (yes I know more costs).

Delivery Trucks

I’m not talking of the heavy construction vehicles but the goods delivery trucks: if you live in a small quiet neighbourhood, it’s no surprise that it will get ruined by a small supermarket having on an hourly basis more than one truck delivering goods (one minute it’s X youghurt company dropping only 10 pieces, the next minute it’s another Y yoghurt company dropping off a few more that get thrown out a few days later due to expiry).

This system should change: there should be a centralised warehouse located on the outskirts of the city that receives all the goods then distributes them to shops around town (preferably in small green vans). This project should be done via public/private partnership. The financial incentive for local factories and distributors to stop sending goods the old way would be the congestion charge and strict parking laws.

Carpooling/Buses

If one watches the video again of the traffic jam in Amman, one would notice that the area with the highest congestion is the Shmeisani/Abdali (and its not only the fault of a 5 lane road merging into 2). It is where most government institutions are located, and a lot of banks have their headquarters. GAM should first ask them nicely to have their employees use public transport or carpool. Next could be a discount on fees if they use their own private buses. Government employees based in the capital should also stop receiving transport allowance if they use their own cars and get instead the public transport card mentioned before.

Other (non-related to traffic) issues

Not related to traffic but starts with the same first 3 letters: TRAsh. It’s everywhere and needs to be cleaned up (and the perpetrators need to be dealt with)

And the problem isn’t a new one:

Talking of pollution, we also need to tackle air and noise pollution. For noise, I might suggest sound monitoring machines just like the city of Edmonton in 2018. Air pollution can be solved alongside the traffic situation.

Traffic jams are a symptom of bad management first, and of undisciplined and unruly drivers second. I trust GAM takes this problem seriously before it balloons even more and explodes in their face.

I leave you with this poem:

عشر اشياء اكرهها في عمان حح

I hate driving in Amman

I hate the traffic going to work and the traffic going back home

I hate that we don’t have clear roads even though the Mayor promised to keep delineating them every year

I hate trying to enjoy a podcast when @$$holes go full road rage mode around me

I hate the white LED lights on the lampposts at night and the white LED lights on the new cars

I hate those who throw cigarette buds out of the car window

I hate the reckless driver getting stopped by the cops and crying crocodile tears to avoid a fine

I hate that you leave very early knowing the traffic to reach an event or movie that says it starts at 7 then only to start half an hour later as the other guests/hosts didn’t show up on time

I hate we didn’t do an “I ❤️Amman” anthology movie when it was all the rage 2 decades ago

But mostly

Happy New Year!

1

81.8% of credit facilities originate in the capital according to the latest Banking bulletin: https://abj.org.jo/download/banking-bulletin-for-the-month-of-november-2025-arabic-version

In 2009, the British academy answered the question on why the greatest minds at the time failed to predict the crash with the famous line: “[it] was principally a failure of the collective imagination of many bright people, both in this country and internationally, to understand the risks to the system as a whole.”1

In the Arab world, the brightest minds suffer from the exact opposite: there is too much imagination. And thanks to AI, we can render these dreams very easily (just like the recent Citadel teleferique project). The main question becomes: can these dreams face financial reality?

When Saudi Arabia announced NEOM nearly a decade ago, I wasn’t surprised to see the immediate backlash by engineers and architects (and human rights activists) at the Line project. The country does have the money to spend, but would the project work? I, like many others, was skeptical about the Line, wishing they would drop it, and the Trojena, the ski resort in the mountains (for the Winter Olympics!?). The Oxagon was the only part that actually made more sense than all the rest.

This brings me to my question about our brightest minds in charge of the project: did they trade off their courage for imagination? Were they too scared to admit that the project would never work?

Talking of fear, this reminds me of the urban legend of how the Moscow metro ended up with a literal circle line: the story goes that when the engineers were showing the blueprints to the underground metro to Stalin, the General secretary put a glass of water which left a circular mark on the map. The engineers were too scared to say anything that they went ahead and built it.

(one can imagine what Neom’s consultants left on the map of Saudi Arabia when they came up with the Line)

Or worse: was imagination replaced with greed? Seriously, was no consultant on the project willing to speak out and be honest about the fact that the project was too ridiculous to pull off? Was the pay check too good to give up?

I think this video clearly sums up the role of the consultants to the project:

Thankfully the Line was first scaled down from 170km to 3km then cancelled altogether.2

I recommend reading the Financial Times’ visual investigation on the matter: https://ig.ft.com/saudi-neom-line/

Now, in Jordan, we have another ambitious (white elephant?) project of our own: AMRA.

Ex Nihilo Planning

In video games, like strategy and city building games, if one fails to beat the game, one can always restart the game and do it better. Not in life: there is no reset button. We live and suffer from an accumulation of mistakes and the unwillingness to listen to the brightest minds.

Except of course when it comes to building a new colony or a new city from scratch in the desert.

I was very skeptical of the proposed ‘New city’ when it was first announced, right around the same time as NEOM; and just like many of us, there were many dreamt up conspiracy theories then (and now). I wrote about it here:

Now the idea of Amra is growing on me (despite having the Social Security Investment Fund buy up lands at 30% discount right off the bat for ~170 mil JODs: why did they rush to buy those lands? was it Black Friday?).

Unlike other projects, this one isn’t rushed nor does it have big ambitions. It is expected to be built up over a long period of time, a quarter of a century to be exact. The most important aspects of building the city are somewhat covered (Green, sustainable, access to water and energy).

The first phase will include a Football Stadium, a Theme Park, and an Exhibition Centre.

I like the concept of it being an ‘Entertainment City’ in the desert (maybe the first phase should be called Las Amras).

I am not into football, so I can’t comment much on that, but the idea of having a dedicated theme park is fascinating.

So, if the dear reader would indulge me further, I just want to share some personal recommendations based on others’ mistakes and hopefully would be read by those in charge of the project:

1. Build a real highway

Every project has to acclimate and take into consideration the local culture. In a standard highway in Europe, you only have highways and barriers (just like how a bowling alley has side barriers for beginners). In Jordan we drive at the hardest (sometimes deadly) setting.

A standard Jordanian highway, take the airport road for example, would have a strawberry stand, a tea/coffee stand, a bus stop, a gas station, cars overtaking you from the right and then slowing down 50% below the speed limit when they spot a camera, people crossing a six lane highway while the pedestrian bridge is a few meters away, and cars double parked in a no parking zone near the highway exit.

To avoid such a mess, the Amra-Amman highway needs to be designed in a way to make it comfortable and safe for us and tourists to drive in and reach Amra/Theme Park in a happy state of mind.

2. Use the Jordanian Securities Market

Readers should know how I like to promote the Amman Stock Exchange and for it to be used to issue bonds or new shares (IPO). If investors are considering building a theme park, they can try to issue bonds/shares right here. And the share certificates can become memorabilia like when Disney built the theme Disneyland in Paris (known as Euro Disney).

Side note: Euro Disney has an interesting financial history of its own. Disney USA issued bonds to finance the construction of Disney land in 1990, took Eurodisney public and later took it private again.

3. Be different

Some speculated that the theme park will be built by Six Flags as they are already invested in the region. If true, why build something that is already available. Why not something completely original?

It was also suggested before to build a Star Trek theme park in Aqaba (number 10).

I would go for something that could capture the imagination of the Arab world. Take Sinbad as a character for example. Yes he is allegedly Omani, but I am sure we can invite Omani consultants (or investors) to help design a theme park around Sinbad and his many travels (like Pirates of the Caribbean). If the investors decide to publicly list it, they should issue share certificates with the Sinbad character on it and shareholders can get special perks like a discount or access to VIP rides or skip the line or something.

Fun fact: The French 🇫🇷 🧀🙈 decided to rebel against EuroDisney by building a theme park nearby inspired by a French character: Asterix.

4. Use courageous and smart consultants

When looking to build the Disney Park in the1950s, Walt Disney used the Standford Research Institute (the same institute that invented the detergent Tide and the Magnetic ink character recognition for cheques). We too should use the best and brightest out there to help design the park. We don’t want the park becoming another Jubeiha.

[for the Exhibition centre: I personally prefer it were to be delayed a bit more. It is true that Amman doesn’t have an official one as we keep jumping between the one on the airport road and Mecca Mall. I personally think it would fit better in Abdali]

End of the Road

Stoics are very much like prudent financiers who are very careful about their investments. Being a stoic means not invest too much of one’s emotions in dreams in order to avoid disappointment.

Amra looks nice on paper. I pray it does achieve what those imagined it would. But I remain cautiously optimistic.

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

“Cette vieille Europe m’ennuie”
(this old Europe bores me)
Napoleon

1

In yesterday’s televised discussion, Dr. Talal Abu Ghazaleh, someone I enjoy listening to when it comes to geopolitics, is arguing that the ‘Old’ countries (of course here alluding to the EU) that are turning towards 3 to 4 working days a week are going to face economic peril very soon. He argues that, as a proponent of maximum productivity, everyone should look to China as a beacon of inspiration (and maybe learn the language too).

It’s true that China is a fearless competitor: scientists over there would work countless hours without sleep to always remain ahead of the competition and adversary.

Dr. Abu Ghazaleh complains how we in Jordan are in fact very unproductive (despite the latest GDP revision). He says that in Jordan we have 40 (?) public holidays while in the USA they have only 8 and that we are the country with the most days off in the world (there are much less according to here but who is counting).

To me, WORK is a matter of Quantity vs. Quality.

Someone can produce more in an hour when well paid and focused (remember ‘if you pay peanuts you get monkeys’2) than someone sitting at a retail store for 10 hours on their phone waiting for a customer to show up when the traffic situation makes it hard for anyone to park near the store.

I, on the contrary to Dr. Abu Ghazaleh, am a proponent of maximum efficiency3, which is usually simplified as a ‘do less with more’ kind of economic model. And I consider myself a libertarian (although I hate putting labels) when it comes to citizens having the choice in productivity: if someone wants to work the legal minimum (what the boss asks basically) and earn the minimum - they are free to do so. If someone wants to work more to earn more, also free to do so. If someone wants to work smart by creating/inventing a passive income stream, also free to do so (winning the lottery, betting on Bitcoin, or leaving fate to chance4 can be included here but the term ‘work smart’ should be substituted with ‘be lucky if God wills it’).
COVID has somewhat been a blessing to really push the idea of flexible work and prove its worth.

I personally believe the future of work will be freer and more flexible to today’s constrained system. Karl Marx put it best:

“For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”

(Talking of labels, using a quote by Marx doesn’t make one a Marxist5 just as using Newton’s second law of motion doesn’t make one a Newtonian)

I hope that in the near future, one can work in a specialised field for a few days, or a few hours per day, then go and teach in a completely different field, and work in the garden later on. Uber could’ve helped achieve this if it were not for its own perverted goals. To each their own (ability).

The Simpsons pretty much sum up what the ideal future of work could look like (i.e. the system works so efficiently workers don’t need to do much) in the opening of this episode:

There should be of course a work life balance for every employee not (only) because it benefits the capital system, but because I don’t think humans are put on this Earth to exhaust themselves to pay out their country’s ballooning debt or need to destroy their natural habitat in order to barely pay off the interest.

Other notes

Talking of work/life balance and working efficiently, I’ve been very busy with work that I haven’t had time to write what needed to be written.

Upcoming posts I’ve been delaying and hope to get done by end of the year (and which I hope the dear reader would enjoy):

-Zombie Bankruptcies

-10 Things I Hate About Amman

-Amra: Nova Neom?

In the meantime, please enjoy this song which I am sure is Dr. Talal Abu Ghazaleh’s favourite:

1

The quote is attributed to Napoleon and repeated by German philosopher and fan of the former, G. W. Hegel. On this note, I recommend this essay which blends philosophy and global financial markets: https://philarchive.org/archive/KOLTSA-3
This is excerpt from where I stole this quote:

3

For those without a Twitter account:

“We are taught that there are 3 phases/stages in Economic Development:
1- Underdeveloped: sleepy country, low energy use, low productivity output, no infrastructure, mostly rural
2- Developing economy [transitional]
3- Developed economy: High productivity with high energy use

But what happens after 3?
Do we have to get up every morning and get to work at 8 for the rest of our professional lives?
Can’t we go back to the good old days where as sheep herders [we] got up at anytime we liked?

I would like to introduce Stage 4 : Post development. At stage 4, the economy becomes “smart”: it knows how to use its resources (thanks to automation) to PRODUCE MORE WITH LESS.
It will still be developed in terms of services (infrastructure, hospital, schools etc.) yet will use less energy at the same time.

This is the Green Economy (not the apocalyptic one envisioned by climate deniers) that we should aim for.

Jordan at the moment is still at stage 2 and the country has a lot of climbing to do before it can start to “relax”. Lebanon was ahead of us but drifted backwards.”

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”
Charles Dickens

I think this sums up pretty well what happened in 2008 for the Amman Stock Exchange. It was the best of year and the worst of year at the same time.

Lots of headlines coming out today claiming we are back to 2008/2009 levels. And we are seeing similar headlines around the world: Japan’s stock market just recovered to the same level after bust of 1990 , Cisco is back to 2000 levels (dot com crash), and Bank of America is back to 2008 price levels (GFC). 2025 seems to be an interesting year: stock markets around the world are reaching new highs and yet the vibe seems off. Markets are reaching new records and yet no one is happy; everyone has a gut feeling that things are about to collapse.

Here, I just want to focus on the Amman market. Are we correct in comparing 2025’s new highs to 2008? So far the market is up a staggering 36.6% !

For those with a short memory (or who have lived 2008 and suppressed it), I’ll try to explain briefly on what happened back then and what, in my opinion, pricked the bubble (without going into too much technical detail).

1999-2008: Gold Rush

The Amman Stock Exchange (Boursa) was founded in 1999 and had electronic trading since 2000. 1999 until 2008 were considered the Boom years.

If we zoom in to 2008, for the first half of the year, everything was looking up. Oil prices were soaring which meant the Gulfies were getting richer and could increasingly spend and invest any surplus in Jordan (we had double digit inflation back then). Other commodity prices were soaring too which led to the rise of Arab Potash (2008 high: 99 JODs per share, low: 25.6 JODs) and Jordan Phosphate (2008 high: 66.99 JODs, low: 12.40 JODs).

The stock market index reached its apogee on June 19th 2008 at 5,043.72 points.

From July until the end of the year, it was the worst of times for the market. The market closed at 2,758.44 on December 30th, falling by 45.31% from its peak in the summer.

Before 2008, everyone kept hearing of a friend or relative investing in the market and making huge amounts of money and profit. People started recommending stocks to each other with non-financial statements such as “Oh the CEO my cousin’s classmate”. Some people were spending their days at the trading complex in Shmeisani paying 5 JODs for valet and trying to look smart analysing charts. Some even worse took out loans to bet on the rise of shares. Everyone rushed in to buy. It was a bull market that slowly morphed into a Casino.

From 2006 until 2008, the average trading volume in a day was 60 million JODs:

(In 2025, the average volume is 8.7 million JODs.)

New IPOs1 were popping up left right and center. Just in 2008 alone, 17 companies were listed on the Amman Stock Exchange, including CJC (covered here), Manaseer Energy (covered here) and Rum Tourist Transport (to be covered soon).

2008: Bubble Bubble Bubble Bubble Pop 🐠

So what caused the market bubble to pop?

Most stock market bubbles are caused by irrational exuberance but this cartoon sort of sums it up best (but in reverse for Jordan):

So what happened in June of 2008 that spooked the market?

On June 18th 2008, MSCI issued a memo2 about changing some criteria about financial markets classification. A financial market can be classified either as Developed, Emerging, or Frontier. The Amman Stock Exchange was until that day classified as an Emerging Market until it wasn’t:

This infamous circular that downgraded the market from Emerging to Frontier (to take effect in November) was to me, the needle that popped the bubble. Some investors (local, regional, international) saw the opportunity to sell and take profit, while others seeing the sell off also panicked, which started the whole domino effect with a the unlucky few who ended up with their pants down and holding the bag3. What aggravated things even more was the collapse of Lehman Brothers (and the Great Financial Crisis of 2008 followed by Dubai’s housing crash in 2009 and the Euro Crisis in 2010) which spooked all market participants. I do want to point out that, unlike other economies, Jordan was shielded (as if in a ‘bubble’) from the outside financial world: we were not exposed to the sub-prime lending crisis and couldn’t be affected. At the end it was all an issue of trust and confidence in the markets. A lot can be said about 2008 and I really wish a financial journalist would write a whole book about it (just like the Arab Bank case).

The market cap of the stock market at its peak in June of 2008 was 40 billion JODs (GDP back then was ~17 billion JODs) - falling to 25.4 billion in December of 2008.
At the end of October 2025, the market cap was barely 25 billion JODs (around 67% of GDP).

2009-2020: Purgatory 🏜️

What happens after 2008 is a very long road of catch up.

From 2009 until 2021, the stock market has been trying to find ways to fix itself to attract the same investment. During that time, there was only 1 IPO: SINIORA in 2012. Nothing since then while many other companies “un-IPOed”

It was a dry period in terms of new listings and trading volumes. There might have been small spikes in trading volumes but that was mostly due to fear and selling, for e.g.: -rumour of adding capital gains tax (big owners ‘sold’ their shares to some Cayman island company) -Arab bank Lebanese shareholder forced to sell after being held hostage in a hotel in a neighbouring Gulf country -2015 oil crash etc. etc.

2021- ?

2021 saw the change with Jordan Phosphate being added to the Frontiers Market Index (not Emerging).

Then the ensuing Russo-Ukrain conflict pushed fertiliser prices even further increasing Phosphates attractiveness to investors due to increasing profits.

By 2022, Jordan Phosphate and Arab Potash dethroned Arab Bank and became the biggest company listed (like how NVDA beat AAPL) on the Amman Stock Exchange. This was a historic moment: Arab Bank has always been the largest market capitalised company in Jordan.

So is 2021 the year we actually pivoted into a new phase of real recovery? I hope so but the change and recovery is slow.

Liquidity is still disappointing and there is no new IPO in sight. No companies wants to go public blaming lack of liquidity in the market - market participants are blaming the lack of (fresh) liquidity on the lack of new interesting companies going public.

2 companies said they would list their shares and go public this year and so far nothing has happened. We need a trigger to get the ball rolling again in the market to snow ball to attract investors.

The stock market or financial market is supposed to reflect the economy in general. And it does in a way: We did have amazing growth for both the market and the economy from 2000-2008. We did see lower growth and many major projects stalling from 2009-2020. And now we are seeing some small yet incremental changes since 2021. What I hope is that the financial markets should start playing a bigger role in the economy: a company doesn’t always have to go to the bank for funds. They can issue shares (IPO) or offer bonds instead in the financial market. There is untapped liquidity and opportunity in the Amman Stock Exchange.

If Amman Stock Exchange wants to go back to the world stage, it is not only in small policy changes and law adjustments, but by attracting investors once again to have trust in it. We are already half way through to becoming an emerging stock market again: Total Market Valuation is >60% of GDP; ATV ratio is good for a lot of companies, a lot of new stocks were added to the Frontier’s Index (including Etihad Bank lately), and many companies have >1 billion JODs in market cap etc.

All is left to do is to bring in the investors (retail, insurance, pension funds etc.). An example I always use: if you are a tourist in a foreign city, you would always go to the restaurant that is filled up with locals (a sign that the food is good and that the turnover of ingredients in the kitchen would lead less to food poisoning). So before we go on tour abroad to attract foreign investment, maybe we need first to attract local investors.

I’ve offered a few simple ideas here:

1

I recommend reading ABC’s 2008 Market Review

2008 Annual Stock Market Performance Overview Report

678KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

2

MSCI announcement document

Msci Announcement Jun 18 2008

44.7KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

“The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.”
Oscar Wilde

63 years after the release of the epic Lawrence of Arabia (based on the actual events), there are many amateur historians and fans that want to relive the Arab revolt and go about the same journey as the polytropic1 English Captain T. E. Lawrence:

Films can capture the imagination and lure in the tourists that want to visit those mesmerising places seen on screen (as does social media in a way).

It is no surprise that after the release of the film Martian (2015), most campsites in Jordan turned their archaic yet simple Bedouin tents to decadent Martian bubbles (which in itself is becoming a bubble, no pun intended).

From the point of view of the Government of Jordan, this is considered the cheapest form of advertising to the country. Compare it to the actual cost of promoting Jordan to tourists on billboards abroad that doesn’t recoup the original investment. According to the general budget, it is estimated that the total marketing budget of the ministry of tourism to be around 50 million JODs when the cost of cash rebates and support for the Royal Film Commission is only 8 million JODs.

Strengths and Weaknesses

So is subsiding the film industry in the form of cash rebates worth it?

Well according to a study, $500 million have poured into Jordan’s economy between 2017 and 2023: Global film productions in Jordan drive $500m economic boost.

And subsidising for film is what everyone in the world is doing (and has been for a long time):

After the success of the last Woody Allen film about Barcelona, the city of Madrid agreed to pay Woody Allen €1.5 milion so that he puts ‘Madrid’ in the title of his next movie that is being filmed over there (what if it turns out to be “I Hate Madrid”?)

There is fierce competition out there to attract foreign film production and investment but Jordan has a few advantages compared to its neighbours:

-safety & security 🧿

-good infrastructure (including newly built studio Olive Wood Studios)

-beautiful locations (if only people would stop throwing trash!!!)

-talented local production teams (which also required a lot of investment and experience since the days of the Red Sea Institute to SAE … and the price paid off)

-one of the highest rebates in the world

N.B.: one thing I would maybe tweak a bit is the tax code and make the full film budget eligible as a write-off for private investors. Take for example the 90’s Hollywood movies based on Video games, like Super Mario Bros. (1993), funded mostly by Germans, that were big box office losses, and meant to be big tax write offs.

Many many series and films were produced here. The Voice from MBC, an Arabic version of Sesame Street for $100 million, multiple Netflix shows. And most recent ones:

Palestine 36, Dune Part 3, and Jordan’s submission to the Oscars All that’s Left of You

I recommend watching them and if you did enjoy them (or not), give them an honest review as Palestinian films are getting review bombed due to their message.

Threats and Opportunities

But there are some headwinds: There is a lot of competition (a war of incentives) out there threatening Jordan’s place as a filming destination; and not so long ago President Tariff Man decided to bring back Hollywood’s production investment from abroad back to the USA (maybe they found a Wadi Rum close to the Grand Canyon) by placing tariffs on foreign made films: https://www.americanactionforum.org/shipment/movie-tariffs-and-the-first-trade-deal/

This doesn’t mean foreign production would disappear overnight but that’s why I would like to propose the following:

A- For a small portion of what will be used as cash rebate, to allocate 4 million JODs per year to establish a Jordanian Film Fund (JFF).

The JFF will push a Jollywood style of local films to allow for local voices to be heard from all walks of life. At 500,000 JODs/indie-auteur film, the JFF can fund up to 7 to 8 films per year. The fund will be bigger than what the Royal Film Commission is currently doing.

500k per full feature film doesn’t look like much compared to the 100s of million spent by mega Hollywood blockbusters, but to use the Baudelaire’s famous saying: “le [budget] contraignant, l’idée jaillit plus intense”2 (many famous Hollywood directors found creative turnarounds when having their budgets cut only for those films to become cinema magic and immortalised). Famous examples of small budget hits include Paranormal Activity from 2007 (budget of ~$200,000 and box office >$190 million) and The Blair Witch Project from 1999 (budget of $500,000 and box office revenue >$500 million).

The JFF would also take a stake in these films in case one of them becomes a big hit.

Imagine that: 1 film every 2 months that could have an either high entertainment value, commercial value, and/or national cultural significance.

The fund’s objective will be like that of the cash rebate: promote Jordan, employ and train lots of local talent, fund as many artistic voices without censorship3. If lucky, like any other venture fund, they could get a handsome return on their investment from only one major breakthrough in the box office.

When thinking of the Arabian film industry scene (apart from Egypt), I always remember how Capernaum became a sleeper hit in China earning over $50 million in box office.

There is a lot of opportunity in this space: just like the investment in the digital world, there is a lot of upside and scaling possibilities. The Film Fund would only need 4 million a year, which is basically half the budget of Ministry of Culture or more than double that of the National Library.

B- Another missing feature in the Jordanian media landscape, and something I always want to see in the Amman Stock Exchange is a publicly traded media company. Saudi Tadawul saw the IPO of the giant MBC (which is doing The Voice in Olive Wood).

We could have a large media company comprising of a large chain of cinemas, a theatre or opera stage, movie production, TV, radio, newspaper, magazines and maybe bookstores too. Something similar to French company Lagardere (Relay in airports, publishing, radio etc.)

The Jordanian media landscape is quite frankly disappointing with a few hits once a decade (another note: a YouTuber with millions of views does not a cultural edifice make). I do hope the Government tweaks the budget just slightly to create a film fund, (maybe with the help of the private sector).

More on Jordan’s film journey:

From ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ to ‘Dune’: Jordan’s cinematic journey

https://www.aramcoworld.com/articles/2015/now-playing-jordan-credit-nadine-toukan

https://www.arabnews.com/node/1590461/lifestyle

AlGhad’s piece on Olive Wood: https://alghad.com/Section-149/فنون/استوديوهات-أوليفوود-بالأردن-بوابة-لصناعة-المحتوى-الإبداعي-عربيا-وعالميا-2045427

A take on the film industry on Ro’ya by Jordanian “John Oliver”:

There has been a lot of drama … about drama series in Jordan lately. On the surface, the drama and controversy seem to revolve around immoral acts such as the kiss scene on a Jordanian Netflix series or the disappearance of Bedouin series (مسلسلات بدوية). The core of the issue is that much of the audience doesn't see itself reflected in anything being shown onscreen, and many are worried about the disappearance of Jordanian/Arabic culture (fueled by a conspiracy theory that these shows are funded by foreign malefactors to erase national identity). There is also a general sense that fewer and fewer people are turning on their television sets to watch any local channels.

Now everyone watches their own thing; no one comes to the office to talk about the latest episode or try to guess what will happen next. The TV scene in Jordan is, at best, chaotic, with no real artistic identity in any of the channels (unless constant complaining counts as an ‘identity trait’)—all while competing with satellite, online content creators, streaming platforms, and the giant that is YouTube.

In my view, I think there is a lack of local funding that fails to encourage a diverse pool of talent. (Investing in film and TV is similar to any other venture capital fund, in the sense that money is invested in a wide variety of projects until one makes up for all the others.)

Follow the money

Just like in the United Kingdom, Jordan has a form of a television license. It is more like a fee that is added to the monthly electric bill. The fee is 1 JOD per month. The money is collected by the electricity companies, which themselves keep a 0.5% collection fee (if the funds are transferred on time).

-Jordan Electric Company (listed on the Amman Stock Exchange, ticker: JOEP) which serves the central region of Jordan has approximately 1.6 million subscribers. This should bring the total annual TV fee to around 19 million JODs (1.6 x 1 JOD/month x 12 months).

Looking at the Annual report for 2024, the commission for collecting the TV fee was 911,108 JODs which lines up with the correct 0.5% commission.

-Ibrid Electric company (listed on the Amman Stock Exchange, ticker: IRBD), serving the Northern regions, has 640k subscribers which should bring the total TV fee to around 7.5 million JODs.

Their 2024 Annual report confirms this with a collected commission fee of 0.5%

-Electricity Distribution Company (listed on the ASE, ticker ELDI) servicing the southern regions, has around 280k subscribers which brings total TV license to 3.4 million JODs. However, their annual report tells a different story, showing that 515,037 JODs were collected as commission; implying a total TV fee collected of 10 million JODs. Why the discrepancy1? (Let me know if I missed something)

To keep things quick (since auditing the electric companies is not part of this post), I will assume that the total TV fees collected (minus commission fees) amounts to approximately 30 million JOD for 2024.

Now that the money has been collected, where does it actually go?

The money collected by the electric companies doesn’t go directly to the Jordan Radio and Television Corporation (JRTC).

According to JRTC’s budget, they received 25 million JOD (which is close to the estimated TV fee amount collected) in “Government Subsidy.”

The collected TV fees actually go to the Prime Ministry’s Office, which then disburses the funds as grants/subsidies to JRTC.

The Real Problems

• The Prime Ministry receiving the television fees and then paying JRTC is not a problem in itself, as it seems they are transferring all of the funds. The issue may lie in the independence of JRTC (since the funding can be used as a pressure point to implement certain programs — or even to censor2).

• Advertising revenue: As seen above, item 142 shows “Revenues from Selling Goods and Services.” One of the benefits of paying for a TV license in the United Kingdom is that the audience gets an advertisement-free experience. This isn’t the case in Jordan, which is a bit unfair to private television channels that have to compete for advertising revenue (their only source of income). The reported 2 million JOD also shows that the television advertising space is very limited.

• Budget for drama series:

  If we look closely at JRTC’s budget, we see that Radio receives around 4.5 million JOD, Administration gets 3.5 million, and Television Programming (which includes news and sports) is allocated 18 million JOD. The amount of money used to produce and/or purchase drama series is (drum roll, please):

2.1 million JODs

Is that a lot? Of course not. Assuming the going rate to produce 1 minute of television is 1,000 JOD, then we’re only producing about 35 hours of drama per year. You can compare that with one kids' show ‘Ahlan Simsim’ that received a grant of $100 million.

There is clearly a lack of funding in the space, especially from the public sector.

Chicken and Egg

Can we increase the TV fee? Let’s first look at the law. The 1 JOD/month fee was decreed in 1979. In 1979! That means, if we adjust for inflation (using my outdated inflation calculator), the TV fee today should be around 6 JODs/month—roughly the cost of a Netflix subscription plus a VPN.

Maybe 1 JOD/month was enough until the late '90s, when we even had a second public English-language channel (JRTV 2) that aired all the latest American shows. But 1 JOD/month today is peanuts.

For comparison, in the UK, the TV licence (for color TVs) is about 12 JODs/month.

So, should the government increase the fee—say, to at least 2 JODs/month—on the condition that public channels stop airing ads?

In my opinion, such a decision would face significant backlash. For one, a portion of society would argue that they don’t watch public TV at all.

Another segment is too busy scrolling through social media (YouTube, TikTok, Instagram…) to even pay attention to traditional TV.

If JRTC is serious about its mandate, then it has to double down on producing quality drama—even with a limited budget—to justify any increase in the TV fee in the future.

My Pessimistic view

If television is a reflection of, or a snapshot, of today’s society in all its forms, then it is no wonder there is a pessimistic sense that society is degrading both morally (I mean it was just a kiss!3) and culturally (is Jordanian culture only Bedouin culture?4).

For the 90s nostalgic generation, the one that lived the analog-to-digital transition, and when the region was relatively quiet, there was a certain ‘magic’ at the time. The current worry is that this magic will never be recreated for newer generations.

As French philosopher Gilles Deleuze once said of philosophy (and it could easily apply to the art of TV-making): “There are no natural deaths, only murder.”

By pursuing trends and focusing on low budget low quality content, drama as an art form in Jordan is being murdered and currently hangs on life support.

Let’s see if there is a chance for recovery.

1

Total subscribers as of 22nd of September: 2.58 million

3

Kissing on screen has a very interesting history, especially in Hollywood.

For example, do you know why women often lift their legs during a kissing scene?

It actually comes from the Hays Code (Motion Picture Production Code, 1934–1950s), which banned certain suggestive acts on screen. Couples had to remain upright (and definitely not on a bed), so directors playfully asked actors to lift one foot to evade the censors. Alfred Hitchcock took it even further in North by Northwest, especially in the famous train scene.

Another fun fact: the first interracial kiss on screen was not Harry Delafonte and Petula Clark or Kirk and Uhura in Star Trek. It was actually in I Love Lucy.

The world is not becoming safer for tourists with an increasing rise in scams targeted at tourists and pickpockets. I personally know many Jordanians who were pickpocketed in the last few years alone and some had their passports stolen.

Some may ask: why would anyone carry their passports with them in the first place? Backpackers always carry their ID with them as do tourists who have just checked out of the hotel and are on their way to the airport for example.

Most pickpockets (why isn’t it pickpocketters?) would usually snatch the bag/purse looking for cash/jewellery/electronics and would throw unnecessary stuff away. However stolen passports are becoming a valuable commodity among human traffickers who can sell them to people looking to cross land/sea borders with fewer electronic checks.

So what to do if this happens to you?

Emergency procedure

What a victim needs to do immediately:

1. File a police report 🚔: go to the nearest police station and file a theft report. This paper is crucial to ensure the passport won’t be used against the victim in another crime and to prove to the Jordanian authorities that the document was actually stolen.

2. Contact the nearest Jordanian Embassy 🇯🇴🏢: the Embassy staff is used to these kinds of issues and are well equipped to handle these situations. The Embassy will offer guidance and will ask you to come to them to collect a paper called a “Laisser Passer”. It’s a short-term travel document that allows you to travel back to Jordan, from the French for “let them pass”.

3. Get a flight home 🛫: The “laisser passer” document allows you to travel back home (directly, without transit). Many airlines have cheap last-minute deals.

Tips and tricks

1. Have a back-up device 📱: if you keep your phone in your bag/purse and it gets stolen, it is always good to have a back-up device. In today’s world, a person’s phone is also part of their identity.

   As an Apple fan1, I would recommend having an iPhone and an iPad as a back-up. From the iPad, you could immediately report a device as stolen. You can also access other apps like your bank app to freeze or cancel your bank cards (remember that you won’t have SMS at this point to receive verification codes). The additional device will allow you to use any communication app to get in touch with family members back home (email, iMessage, social media apps etc.). If you don’t have a back up device, again if you are in the Apple ecosystem and have created a family group on Apple with an emergency contact, you can have your family members report your devices as stolen.

2. Have back-up money 💰: It is always good to carry cards and cash and to never keep them in the same place. If the cards get stolen, at least you would have some cash. If both get stolen, it is recommended to have virtual credit cards stored on your phone/tablet (Apple Wallet/Android) to be used for emergencies.

3. Have back-up ID + Install Sanad: It is always good to have copies of your passport, IDs backed up on some cloud (iCloud, Google etc.) that you can print out for later. Having Sanad is also extremely helpful: for one, you can start the process of issuing your Urgent Travel Document (Ministry of Interior tab) or Laisser Passer immediately from the app itself and pick it up from the embassy.

   

4. Be an airline rewards member: being a member of an airline or airline group really helps. Not only do they have all your personal details, but you could have gained a lot of airline miles that can be used for an emergency trip back home.

5. Insurance: it never hurts to get travel insurance. This is a big topic but there are lots of options (including with credit cards) and always make sure to read the fine print as you could be reimbursed on a lot of things.

Despite Jordan’s passport being not as powerful as the U.A.E’s, Singapore, or the EU — it is still one of the fastest to be issued and renewed around the world.

From a lot of the feedback I saw, Jordanians who had their passports stolen were really impressed by the embassy staff who were very helpful and professional and expedient (except for one in a latin American country where the ambassador was never around). Even inside Jordan, everyone keeps saying how amazing and fast it is to renew one’s passport, driving license, or ID.

Bon voyage and safe travels ✈️