Estimates from the Department of Statistics, released on September 30, 2026, showed that the real gross domestic product (GDP) grew by 3% during the second quarter of the current year, as previously expected, compared to about 2.8% in the same quarter of 2025, and after growth of 2.9% in the first quarter of this year. Thus, the Jordanian economy is moving at the threshold of 3%, following a path of gradual improvement over recent years.
The significance of the figure does not lie in reaching 3% per se, but in the trend behind it. But what is driving growth today? The most encouraging answer is that a significant part of the improvement comes from the productive economy. Recent data indicate strong performance in the manufacturing industry and a number of related productive and service activities. This is important, because growth led by industry, investment, and exports is different in nature and impact from growth based primarily on consumption or short-term activities.
The importance of industry is that it does not grow alone. Its growth drives transportation, trade, and services, and increases export and employment opportunities. The more the contribution of higher productivity and value-added sectors, the more capable the economy is of maintaining growth, rather than recording temporary increases that soon decline.
We will not quickly move from 3% to 4%, 5%, or 8%, because moving to higher sustainable growth rates requires a gradual restructuring of the Jordanian economy, not a single economic decision or a short-term stimulus package. Under normal circumstances, the economy cannot double its speed overnight, because raising sustainable growth requires expanding high-productivity and high-value-added sectors, increasing investment, deepening the industrial and export base, increasing the use of technology, improving water, energy, and transportation infrastructure, and linking human capital more closely to the needs of the new economy. These are all structural transformations that require time, investment, and accumulation of capital and productivity.
From this perspective, future projects become important in reading the future of growth. The second executive program of the economic modernization vision for the years 2026-2029 includes 182 initiatives distributed across 25 sectors, implemented through 392 projects. It also includes major investment projects and public-private partnership projects, while the government indicates private sector partnership investments of nearly 10 billion dinars during the program's implementation period, with part of it starting to be offered and implemented in the energy, water, transportation, and infrastructure sectors.
Focusing on projects is extremely important; policies and legislation can improve the economic environment, but projects are what turn directions into real investment and new productive capacity. Also, a large project does not give its effect all at once. The effect begins during implementation through spending, operation, demand for construction, transportation, and services, and then becomes deeper after operation when it adds new productive capacity and lowers some costs of the economy and opens the way for other investments.
Therefore, a significant part of the effect of the projects being prepared or implemented has not yet fully appeared in GDP figures. This makes the current growth reading more positive: the economy reached the 3% threshold at a time when a new cycle of investment and projects is still in its early stages.
There is a third factor that should never be underestimated, which is confidence and expectations. The investor who decides to establish a factory, the company that decides to expand, and the family that decides to buy a house or a durable good, all make their decisions today based on what they expect tomorrow. That is why the science of economics has given great importance to confidence and expectations in explaining investment, consumption, and economic activity.
In this context, a survey by the Center for Strategic Studies at the University of Jordan, released in April 2026 after a year and a half of the government's formation, provides an important indicator of the general mood. It showed that 54% of the national sample respondents believe that things in Jordan are going in a positive direction. Also, 62% believed that the government was able to bear the responsibilities of the stage, and 64% that the Prime Minister was able to bear its responsibilities.
These results do not mean that economic challenges have disappeared, but they mean that a majority of respondents still look positively at the general direction of the country, coinciding with the improvement in the growth rate and the start of a new cycle of projects and investments.
This confidence comes today in conjunction with two important matters: growth that has already been achieved, and projects and investments whose full effect has not yet appeared. Confidence alone does not create growth, but it is important when combined with investment, implementation, and improvement in actual indicators, because it affects companies' and investors' readiness to make expansion and investment decisions.
It is not true to say that rising confidence alone caused the rise in growth; the economic relationship is more complex than that. However, improved expectations are important because they encourage the investor to make a decision rather than wait, and give companies more confidence to expand. When this is accompanied by project implementation and increased productivity, it adds new strength to the growth path.
Our goal should not be merely to raise the growth figure from 3% to 4% or 5%. What is more important is that growth results from improved productivity, is based more on investment, exports, and technology, and becomes more capable of creating jobs and raising citizens' income. The goal of growth is not to improve national accounts tables, but to improve people's lives.
The picture today is cause for optimism. There is an economy growing at a better pace, productive sectors are moving, a large portfolio of projects and investments is gradually entering the implementation phase, and a government that has made projects, growth, and implementation a central focus of its economic program, alongside a noticeable level of confidence and positive expectations.
Three percent is not the ceiling for the Jordanian economy. Its real significance is that it was achieved at the beginning of a new cycle of projects and investment, not at its end. As these projects come into operation, the productive sectors continue to improve, and positive confidence and expectations are strengthened, the opportunity is available to gradually move to higher and more sustainable growth rates. Achieving these rates will not be a leap that happens overnight, but the result of restructuring the economy, raising its productivity, and expanding its investment and productive base.
