Amman: Director of the Middle East and Central Asia Department at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Jihad Azour Wednesday said the “solidity” of the Jordanian economy enabled the Kingdom to overcome the burdens of the expected impact of the Israeli war on Gaza.

In a conference on the economic forecast report for the MENA region, Azour advised the Jordanian authorities to hedge against the risks of a spillover to the Israeli war on Gaza by adopting effective financial and monetary policies.

He added that the programme the government recently signed with the IMF helped activate the economic and financial measures, enhancing the capacity and solvency of public financial conditions and increasing the Kingdom’s opportunity to borrow at low interest rates in light of the national economic reforms.

The IMF’s report expected that Jordan’s economic growth in 2023 and 2024 would decline to 2.6 per cent, compared to previous expectations of 3 per cent growth in 2024.

A new IMF report shows that the Israeli war o
n the Gaza Strip “represented a new shock” to the countries of the MENA region, explaining that the war created economic challenges in neighbouring countries.

He added that the regional developments have reduced the expected growth of economies for 2024 by 0.5 percentage points to 2.9 per cent and that the average growth in low-income countries in the region will remain negative during the current year as inflation is expected to continue to decline in most of the region’s economies.

Source: Jordan News Agency