Jordanian factories produced over 500m during pandemic — stakeholder

AMMAN — Local factories have produced around 500 million masks since the outbreak of the pandemic to cover the local market’s needs and have exported the surplus, a stakeholder said on Saturday.

Ihab Qadiri, the representative of the leather and textile industries at the Jordan Chamber of Industry, said that prior to the pandemic the Kingdom only produced 20,000 masks daily, while after the virus outbreak production increased to 5.5 million masks daily, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

In 2020, the Kingdom exported a total of 100 million masks with a value of JD16 million that reached 30 markets around the world, Qadiri pointed out.

Qadiri also noted that Saudi Arabia accounted for the largest share of mask exports with a value of about JD10 million, followed by Qatar, the UK, Iraq, the US, Egypt, Guatemala, Palestine, Germany and Kuwait.