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Continued reform would help an already strong economic performance

Jordan has made great strides following its accession to the WTO, in reforming its economy and liberalizing its trade regime. This has contributed to average real GDP growth of close to 6% over the past 8 years, a relatively low inflation, and increasing annual inflows of foreign direct investment, according to a WTO Secretariat report on the trade policies and practices of Jordan.

Since its economy is dominated by services, a sector accounting for two thirds of its GDP, Jordan would benefit from further opening key service subsectors and by streamlining its business environment that remains somewhat inhibited by administrative hurdles, limitations on foreign participation in certain activities and costly transport infrastructure and utilities.

Jordan would also gain from further dismantling of its tariff and non-tariff barriers to trade, and simplification of its complex incentives regime in which five schemes overlap.

The WTO report, along with a policy statement by the Government of Jordan, will be the basis for the first TPR of Jordan by the Trade Policy Review Body of the WTO on 10 and 12 November 2008.

The following documents are available in MS Word format.

• Secretariat report
> Contents and summary observations
> Economic environment
> Trade and investment regimes
> Trade policies and practices by measure
> Trade policies by sector
> Appendix tables

• Government report

• Revisions of the above documents may be issued approximately 2 weeks after the meeting.

• Chairperson's concluding remarks
Audio: Chairperson's concluding remarks

• Minutes of the meeting are available approximately 6 weeks after the meeting.

• Questions and answers by WTO Members are available approximately 6 weeks after the meeting.

Trade Policy Reviews are an exercise, mandated in the WTO agreements, in which member countries trade and related policies are examined and evaluated at regular intervals. Significant developments that may have an impact on the global trading system are also monitored. For each review, two documents are prepared: a policy statement by the government of the member under review, and a detailed report written independently by the WTO Secretariat. These two documents are then discussed by the WTOs full membership in the Trade Policy Review Body (TPRB). These documents and the proceedings of the TPRBs meetings are published shortly afterwards.

Print copies of previous TPR publications are available for sale from the WTO Secretariat, Centre William Rappard, 154 rue de Lausanne, 1211 Geneve 21 and through the on-line bookshop .

The TPR publications are also available from our co-publisher Bernan Press, 4611-F Assembly Drive, Lanham, MD 20706-4391, United States.

Dominican Republic: 24 and 26 November 2008
Liechtenstein and Switzerland: 15 and 17 December 2008