RIYADH: Jordan’s public revenues for 2025 are projected at 10.2 billion dinars ($14.3 billion), slightly down from the 10.3 billion dinars forecast for 2024, according to the nation’s General Budget Department.

The 2025 draft budget estimated 9.5 billion dinars in local revenues and 734.3 million dinars from foreign grants, closely aligning with the figures for 2024.

The draft budget provided a detailed financial framework for the country, highlighting major national development projects, governorate-specific allocations, and a roadmap for spending during 2025–2027. 

The document underscored the government’s commitment to balancing fiscal discipline with strategic investments aligned with Jordan’s Economic Modernization Vision.

The vision is centered on the slogan “A Better Future” and focuses on two main pillars: driving accelerated economic growth and enhancing the quality of life for all citizens.

Sustainability is also a key foundation of this vision.

Economic and fiscal overview

Total public expenditures for 2025 are estimated at 12.5 billion dinars, consisting of:

• 11.04 billion dinars in current expenditures allocated for operational and administrative functions, including salaries, pensions, and subsidies.
• 1.47 billion dinars in capital expenditures, reflecting a 16.5 percent increase compared to 2024. This allocation prioritizes infrastructure development, health care enhancements, and educational improvements.

The budget targets a reduction in the primary deficit to 2 percent of gross domestic product, compared to 2.9 percent in 2024.

Key national investments

The draft budget emphasized transformative projects to address critical national needs, including the National Water Carrier Initiative, which addresses Jordan’s chronic water scarcity and ensures long-term water security.

There is also a focus on a railway project that connects Aqaba Port to Al-Shidiya and Ghor Al-Safi. This initiative aims to boost logistical efficiency and economic integration.

Other key projects include investments in renewable energy and infrastructure upgrades and enhancements in public transportation networks to ease connectivity and reduce environmental impact.

Economic growth targets

The budget framework projects there will be 2.5 percent real GDP growth, driven by ongoing structural reforms.

It also forecases 4.9 percent nominal growth, supported by moderate inflation rates that contribute to financial and monetary stability.

Governorate budgets and modernization efforts

The budget allocates significant funds to governorates to ensure equitable development and address local priorities. Notable regional allocations include money for the construction and maintenance of hospitals, schools, and transportation infrastructure.

There is also funding for agricultural development, water management, and job creation initiatives tailored to local needs.

Specific projects detailed in the governorate budgets include road maintenance and expansions in Irbid, Al-Mafraq, and other regions, investments in health care facilities, including expansions of hospitals and primary care centers, and the development of educational institutions, such as building new schools and upgrading existing facilities.

In line with the “Public Sector Modernization The Roadmap,” the draft budget included funding for implementing updated job guidelines, creating new vacancies, and modernizing public administration to enhance service delivery.

This framework is a comprehensive roadmap to improve public administration and enhance the institutional approach to responding efficiently to domestic and global developments. 

RIYADH: Saudi Arabia’s NEOM gigaproject, a futuristic region being built in the desert, is a “generational investment” with a long timeline, the country’s investment minister told Reuters on Monday, adding that foreign investment will pick up pace.

“NEOM was not meant to be a two-year investable opportunity. If anybody expected NEOM to be foreign investment in two, three or five years, then they have gotten (it) wrong — it’s a generational investment,” Minister Khalid Al-Falih said on the sidelines of the World Investment Conference in Riyadh.

“The flywheel is starting and it will gain speed as we go forward, as some of the foundational assets come to the market,” he said.

The world’s top oil exporter has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into development projects through the Kingdom’s $925 billion sovereign fund, the Public Investment Fund, as it undergoes an economic agenda dubbed Vision 2030 to cut dependence on fossil fuels.

NEOM, a Red Sea urban and industrial development nearly the size of Belgium that is meant to eventually house 9 million people, is central to Vision 2030.

NEOM announced this month its long-time chief executive, Nadhmi Al-Nasr, had stepped down, without giving further details.

Asked what effect the departure would have on investors, the minister said the executive had done “a respectable job” but that “there is a time for everybody to pass on the baton.”

Asked if PIF will continue to do much of the spending on NEOM until more foreign funds come in, Al-Falih said it was not binary.

“I think foreign investors are starting to come to NEOM, they’re starting to channel capital. Some of the projects that the PIF will be doing will be financed through global capital pools, through some alternative and private capital. That’s taking place as we speak,” he said.

“So I urge you not to look at NEOM as being 100 percent PIF and then suddenly there will be a cliff and it will go private.”

Saudi Arabia, which is racing to attract $100 billion in annual foreign direct investment by the turn of the decade — reaching about a quarter of that in 2023 — has recently seen more co-investment deals between state entities and foreign investors.

“It’s always been the intent,” Al-Falih said of foreign inflows alongside state funds.

He noted that foreign investors were at times “still looking, still examining, still sometimes questioning,” but that now there was confidence in the profitability of investment opportunities and that “the risk-return trade-offs are very, very fair and positive to them.”