The Central Bank of Jordan revealed that tourism income fell by 59.6 percent in the first five months of this year to 316.7 million dinars ($446.6 million), compared to 784 million during the same period last year, after the “Corona” pandemic ravaged the tourism and travel sector due to closures and restrictions on passenger movement.
In parallel, the balance of public debt owed by Jordan increased by 2% to 27.03 billion dinars ($38.1 billion) in the first five months of this year, compared to 26.49 billion dinars at the end of 2020.
The statistics of the Ministry of Finance showed that Jordan's internal debt reached 13.11 billion dinars at the end of May, and the external debt was about 13.92 billion dinars. Noting that Jordan's public debt is equivalent to 85.9 percent of the Kingdom's GDP.
The Ministry of Finance changed the method of calculating the public debt this year, to exclude the debts owed to the Social Security Investment Fund, which amount to approximately seven billion dinars. These data coincide with the decline in net foreign direct investment flowing into Jordan in the first quarter of this year by 70.6 percent on an annual basis, to about 61.3 million dinars ($86.4 million).
Source (Asharq Al-Awsat Newspaper, Edited)
