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Ammon News - Jordanian Industrialists have called for stimulating and supporting the Kingdom's industrial sector's exports in order to achieve comprehensive economic development, reduce the trade balance deficit and create jobs.

Speaking to the Jordan News Agency (Petra), the stakeholders underlined the importance of increasing production, lowering production costs, and holding external exhibitions as well as enhancing the role of embassies abroad.

"Jordan’s industrial sector has an untapped export potential of about $4.5 billion in various industries according to the World Trade Center," representative of the chemical industries and cosmetics sector at the Jordan Chamber of Industry, Ahmad Al-Bess said, underscoring that the challenges of each sector must be analyzed alone to determine its export opportunities and the targeted countries due to conclude agreements with them.

Head of the Irbid Chamber of Industry, Hani Abu Hassan, stressed that stimulating local exports requires reducing production costs to bring them to higher levels in order to internationally compete, and providing further financial support to exporters.

For his part, Amman Chamber of Industry's board member Zakaria Al Faqih said that the Kingdom's trade balance deficit estimated at JD5 billion, pointing to the importance of searching for effective ways to increase exports, by creating a special program to support them and producing a large part of Jordan's imports locally.

Supporting exports, increasing production, and opening more factories, he said, drives the economic wheel, increases treasury revenues, and provides job opportunities.

Noteworthy, the government has placed the industrial sector among its economic priorities for the next two years, by activating the Jordan Exports and setting a national export strategy.

The Jordanian industrial sector has a massive production capacity, as it manages to produce 1,500 commodities exporting to more than 142 markets around the world, and it accounts for 45 percent of the local market's total share of consumption.

(Petra)