Jordan-Long-Range Planning

The 1986-90 Five-Year Plan listed several longer range economic goals to be attained by the year 2000. The most important was to keep Jordan's economy growing at a rate faster than the projected rate of population growth so that gains in the standard of living would not be diluted. Assuming a drop in the birth rate over the decade beginning in 1990, this objective would entail maintaining an annual real (inflation-adjusted) growth rate in GNP of 2 percent. Another goal was to foster 6 percent annual growth of the consumer and capital goods producing sector of the economy through the year 2000, so that it would eventually account for more than 40 percent of GDP. Manufacturing value added was to be increased by substituting domestic materials for imported industrial and raw material inputs. A related goal was to reduce imported goods and services to 56 percent of GDP by the year 2000, down from 90 percent in 1985. Technical training was to continue to ensure that the labor force remained among the most skilled and professional in the Arab world. Finally, domestic savings were to finance an increasing share of investment. The plan also listed several socioeconomic priorities for the year 2000: to continue to distribute development more equitably throughout the country; to make the country's arid desert regions a focus of future development; and to ensure that all citizens had access to health, education, communications services, housing, and utilities.

Data as of December 1989