Welcome to the new look of Zarka Chamber of Industry’s website. We hope that it will serve the industrial and business community to stay well connected particularly in a region full of uncertainties yet full of opportunities.
While Jordan’s economy has gone through economical and geopolitical challenges accompanied with influx of 1.3 million Syrian refugees and the closure of its Northern and Eastern borders. However, Zarqa Chamber of Industry was able to challenge the status quo as we have witnessed record-high exports of $931.1 million in 2017 growing 4.7%. This was made possible by the resilient strategic planning adopted by the chamber since the closure of the Iraqi borders in mid-2015. The more focused strategies on potential markets like East Africa, Arab Gulf, and Northern American markets. This success has positioned the governorates of Zarqa and Mafraq at the global investment and exporting map attracting more foreign direct investment.
The chamber’s vision has enabled it to diversify its members’ export markets and target new markets to offset the losses of traditional Arab export markets due to the political turmoil. The chamber’s innovative plans had created roads to new markets that influenced the Jordanian administration decision maker to pursue.
Zarqa Chamber of Industry’s strategies also focus on specific industrialists that have potentials to grow and expand their markets. In addition, the chamber targets foreign investors who will help in transforming Jordan into an export hub particularly in the industries that we have comparative advantages over others. We have implemented many programs to leverage the rich human resources Jordan has with the unique free trade agreements with the EU, Canada and the United States.
The chamber’s efforts expanded to collaborate with other chambers and confederations of industries in Europe to attract large corporates to invest in Jordan. Our efforts also reached east to China as we have hosted potential Chinese investors in the packaging industry accompanied with BOSOM company who provided our members with 10 full scholarships per year to provide our engineers with latest technologies and know-how at state-of-art Chinese universities.
In the end, we will continue to think and innovate to create value for our members and the industrial sector in Jordan. While it might have seemed a difficult mission, we were able to mitigate the risks during the past 2 most difficult years, and we are looking forward to growing our exports 6-7% in 2018 to surpass the $1 billion barrier. We will continue to work hard to reduce the gap in Jordan’s balance trade and offset the increasing unemployment rates. Finally, we ask ‘Aallah’ God Amighty to help us serve our great Jordan under the blessings of our Hashemite leader his Majesty King Abdullah the second Bin Alhussein.
Chairman
Fares Hammoudeh
