The latest estimates released by Jordan’s Department of Statistics on September 30, 2026, show that real GDP grew by 3 per cent in the second quarter of this year—a rate I had previously anticipated—compared with around 2.8 in the same quarter of 2025 and 2.9 per cent in the first quarter of 2026. The Jordanian economy has thus reached the 3 per cent threshold, following a gradual improvement in growth over recent years.

 

The significance of this figure lies not simply in reaching 3 per cent, but in the direction of travel. What, then, is driving growth today? Most encouragingly, a significant part of the improvement is coming from the productive economy. Recent data point to strong performance in manufacturing and several related productive and service activities. This matters because growth driven by industry, investment and exports is fundamentally different in both character and impact from growth that relies primarily on consumption or short-term activity.

 

Manufacturing does not grow in isolation. Its expansion stimulates transportation, trade, and services, while creating greater opportunities for exports and employment. The larger the contribution of high-productivity, high-value-added sectors, the greater the economy’s ability to sustain growth rather than merely experience temporary upswings.

 

We will not move quickly from 3 per cent growth to 4 per cent, 5 per cent, or even 8 per cent. Sustaining significantly higher growth requires a gradual restructuring of the Jordanian economy, not a single policy decision or a short-term stimulus package. Under normal circumstances, an economy cannot double its growth rate overnight. Higher sustainable growth requires expanding more productive and higher-value-added sectors, increasing investment, deepening the industrial and export base, accelerating the adoption of technology, improving water, energy, and transport infrastructure, and better aligning human capital with the needs of a changing economy. These are structural transformations, and they require time, investment, capital accumulation, and productivity gains.

 

This is precisely why the pipeline of upcoming projects is so important when assessing Jordan’s future growth prospects. The second Executive Programme of the Economic Modernisation Vision for 2026–2029 includes 182 initiatives across 25 sectors, to be implemented through 392 projects. It also includes major investment projects and public-private partnerships, while the government expects investment in partnership with the private sector to approach JD10 billion over the programme period. Some of these projects are already being tendered or implemented in energy, water, transport, and infrastructure.

 

The focus on projects matters greatly. Policies and legislation can improve the economic environment, but projects are what translate policy direction into actual investment and new productive capacity. Nor does a major project deliver its full economic impact all at once. Its effect begins during implementation through spending, employment, construction, transportation, and demand for services. The impact becomes deeper once the project is operational, adding new productive capacity, reducing some of the costs facing the economy, and creating opportunities for further investment.

 

A significant part of the economic impact of projects currently under preparation or implementation has therefore yet to appear fully in GDP figures. This makes the current growth performance even more encouraging: Jordan has reached the 3 per cent threshold while a new cycle of investment and major projects is still in its early stages.

 

There is a third factor that should never be underestimated: confidence and expectations. An investor deciding whether to build a factory, a company considering expansion, or a household deciding whether to purchase a home or a durable good all make decisions today partly on the basis of what they expect tomorrow to bring. This is why economics has long attached considerable importance to confidence and expectations in explaining investment, consumption and overall economic activity.

 

In this context, an April 2026 public opinion survey by the University of Jordan’s Centre for Strategic Studies, conducted a year and a half after the formation of the government, provides a useful indication of public sentiment. It found that 54 per cent of respondents in the national sample believed that things in Jordan were moving in a positive direction. In addition, 62 per cent believed that the government had been capable of carrying out the responsibilities of the period, while 64% said the same of the prime minister.

 

These findings do not mean that Jordan’s economic challenges have disappeared. They do, however, indicate that a majority of those surveyed continue to view the country’s overall direction positively, at a time when economic growth is improving, and a new cycle of projects and investment is beginning.

 

This confidence coincides with two important developments: growth that has already materialised, and projects and investments whose full impact has yet to be felt. Confidence does not create growth on its own. But when accompanied by investment, implementation, and improving economic indicators, it matters because it influences the willingness of companies and investors to expand and commit capital.

 

It would therefore be wrong to argue that rising confidence alone has caused stronger growth; the economic relationship is far more complex. But better expectations do matter. They can encourage investors to act rather than wait and give businesses greater confidence to expand. When this is accompanied by project implementation and rising productivity, it adds further momentum to the growth process.

 

Nor should our objective simply be to move the headline growth rate from 3 per cent to 4 per cent or 5 per cent. What matters more is that growth increasingly results from higher productivity, relies more heavily on investment, exports, and technology, and becomes better able to create jobs and raise citizens’ incomes. The purpose of economic growth is not to improve the numbers in the national accounts; it is to improve people’s lives.

 

The picture today gives grounds for optimism. The economy is growing at a stronger pace, productive sectors are gaining momentum, a substantial portfolio of projects and investments is gradually moving into implementation, and the government has placed projects, growth, and execution at the heart of its economic programme. This is taking place alongside a notable degree of confidence and positive expectations.

 

Three percent is not the ceiling for Jordan’s economy. Perhaps its real significance is that it has been achieved at the beginning of a new cycle of projects and investment, not at its end. As these projects move into implementation, productive sectors continue to strengthen, and confidence and expectations improve, Jordan has an opportunity to move gradually towards higher and more sustainable rates of growth. Reaching those rates will not happen overnight. It will be the result of restructuring the economy, raising productivity, and broadening its investment and productive base.

 

The author is a former Jordanian minister of State for Economic Affairs.