jordan pulse -
Jordan has completed 31 additional reform measures in the past six months in the “Enhancing Reform Management Project” that was launched in cooperation with the World Bank, to coordinate and monitor the reform matrix that the government committed to.
According to data obtained by “Al-Mamlaka”, these newly completed measures raised the completion rate in the project to 66%, indicating that 25% of the beneficiaries were women, within the reform matrix that was announced at the (London Initiative) conference in 2019.
The bank confirmed that the total number of completed reform measures increased to 263 reform measures, while there are still 140 reforms that need to be completed within the reform matrix.
During the period from January to July 2023, the completed reforms in the updated reform matrix reached 19 reforms, with a cumulative total of 80 reforms. In the same period for the sub-indicator that measures the number of reforms that focus on women, it reached 7 reforms with a cumulative total of 20.
The World Bank agreed to finance the project, valued at $6.5 million, in September 2019, within a multi-donor trust fund (supported by the governments of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, Norway and Canada), and also agreed to provide additional financing for the “Enhancing Reform Management” project in Jordan, valued at $9.3 million.
By the end of last February, the World Bank’s payments to finance the project amounted to $6.4 million out of $15.8 million, with a financing rate of 41%, where the bank expects its payments for the program to increase in 2024.
The bank said, in the report that “Al-Mamlaka” obtained, that the project continues to perform towards achieving its development objective and its defined outcome indicators, as the reform secretariat coordinated effectively with the ministries, departments and agencies responsible for implementing specific policy reforms using the reform support fund.
The bank stressed that Jordan worked through the program to enhance public procurement policies, frameworks and processes, and that they will be applied to executive and administrative directors in order to achieve effective procurement, and that the procurement policy committee approved the publication of the Jordanian electronic procurement system (JONEPS), which is currently used by 23 government institutions.
The bank’s evaluation report also witnessed “significant progress” in public investment management reforms and public-private partnership, which praised the operation of the national registry system for investment projects, which is used by government entities to submit project concept notes to the public investment management unit at the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation.
The additional financing included restructuring the project by expanding the scope of its activities, and extending its closure to match the timeline of the updated reform matrix, where the closing date became June 30, 2025, instead of December 31, 2022.
The bank explained in previous statements that the additional financing includes $1.5 million to support public-private partnership projects, and $2 million to support public procurement reforms, in addition to recommendations to simplify the project design by reducing the number of components from 3 to two; a component to finance the reform secretariat, and another component to finance the reform support fund.
The World Bank indicated that the new development objective of the project became “to enhance the coordination and implementation of reforms in Jordan with a focus on the updated reform matrix” (2018-2024), indicating that the project is working “well” and has achieved many of the required indicators.
In order to monitor, coordinate and facilitate the process of implementing the reform matrix, a unit to support the implementation of economic reforms (secretariat) was established in the Ministry of Planning in late 2019, which also provides the necessary technical assistance to the ministries and government departments concerned with implementing the reforms, and communicates and consults with the relevant parties periodically to arrange the reform priorities, and prepare periodic reports on the progress of the work.
The bank explained that the unit in the Ministry of Planning continues to support the ministries, departments and agencies implementing the reform in reforming related policies through 12 pillars of the reform matrix using the reform support fund.
The reform support unit also effectively supports the implementation of the main operations funded by the World Bank, such as the comprehensive, transparent and climate-sensitive investment program, and the economic opportunities project for Jordanians and Syrian refugees.
The updated reform matrix extends for two years, to work on expanding the covered sectors from 9 to 12 pillars, where new pillars were added, the most prominent of which are public sector efficiency and governance, and tourism, and the original water and agriculture pillar was divided into two separate pillars, to become the total reform pillars covered by the project 44 reform areas.At the London Conference in February 2019, the government announced its commitment to its economic reform and growth plan within a 5-year reform matrix (2018-2022) that was later extended to 2024, based on a set of political and structural reforms related to the most important economic policy issues facing Jordan.