Labour productivity rate in Jordan a bit high regionally, low internationally — JSF

AMMAN — The growth rate of labour productivity in Jordan has been negative since 2010, the Jordan Strategy Forum (JSF) said on Saturday.

In a recently-issued summary of policies on productivity in the Kingdom, the JSF said that the labour productivity rate in Jordan in 2018 stood at 2 per cent, compared with Arab countries such as the UAE, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia, where the Kingdom achieved better results than these countries in the 2000-2007 period.

Internationally, Jordan’s rate was also low compared with other countries, where Lithuania, Georgia, China and India topped the Kingdom in terms of the workforce productivity, according to a JSF statement to The Jordan Times.

As for the overall productivity for the production factors (workforce and capital), the rate in Jordan in 2018 stood at 0.8 per cent, surpassing countries like Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

The forum stressed that productivity, with its workforce and capital components, needs a thorough study to identify factors that contribute to the decline of productivity and finding means to boost it.

The JSF said that some structural factors play a role in such a drop, such as the nature of the jobs that the national economy has created and the technology used in the production process, especially that most generated jobs were focused in the service sectors and others with low added value.

The working paper showed that productivity is associated with the human capital skills that seem not to be well-utilised in Jordan or face problems in terms of lack of conformity with the requirements of the Jordanian labour market.

In this regard, the forum highlighted the importance of providing a national programme for incentives that can help attract new technologies to enable the Kingdom to employ a skilful workforce in new investments and projects.

In its study, the JSF relied on data from the Conference Board Total Economy Database, which is a comprehensive database with annual data covering GDP, population, employment, hours, labour quality, capital services, labour productivity and total factor productivity for about 123 countries in the world.