Central Bank of Jordan maintains interest rates unchanged

AMMAN — The Open Market Operations Committee of the Central Bank of Jordan (CBJ) on Thursday decided to keep interest rates on monetary policy instruments unchanged.

The bank affirmed its commitment to closely following up on developments related to the national economy's performance, especially monetary and banking indicators, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

The CBJ said that this move coincides with close follow-up of global economic developments, financial and commodity market performance, and regional and global central bank monetary policy plans to counter inflation-related pressures. 

The committee stressed its confidence in the national economy's performance as shown by the latest economic data, citing that the CBJ's foreign reserves have reached $17.5 billion by the end of October, which is sufficient to cover the Kingdom's imports of goods and services for 7.8 months. 

The committee also referred to the increase in bank deposits (year-on-year) by JD1.5 billion in September 2023, with a growth of 3.5 per cent to JD43.3 billion.

The credit facilities granted by banks (year-on-year) also increased by JD1.3 billion, with a growth rate of 4.7 per cent.

The CBJ also said that the tourism income increased by 37.7 per cent in the first three quarters of 2023, and exports of national goods went up to JD5.6 million in the first eight months of the year.

Jordanian expatriates' remittances increased by 0.9 per cent to JD1.8 billion until the end of September.

The Central Bank’s estimates indicate that foreign direct investment inflows to the Kingdom increased in the first half of 2023 to $776 million, a growth of 20.9 per cent.

All this was reflected in the rise in the national economy’s real growth rate to 2.7 per cent in the first six months of 2023, while the inflation rate went down to 2.3 per cent in the first three quarters of 2023.