Fifty new ventures have been licensed and registered during the COVID-19 pandemic in various investment sectors, Jordan Investment Commission (JIC) Chairman Khaled Wazani said in a JIC statement on Wednesday. 

Wazani's remarks came during a virtual meeting that witnessed the participation of Jordanian Businessmen Association (JBA) President Hamdi Tabbaa and Vice President of the Businesspeople Association of Jordanian Expatriates Hassan Barmawi and the Kingdom’s Ambassador to Italy Fayez Khoury, in addition to a number of Jordanian businesspeople working in European countries.

During the meeting, talks went over the Kingdom’s available investment opportunities and business environment, in addition to the role of the government and the JIC in handling the COVID-19 crisis and setting plans to boost investment.   

Stressing that the Kingdom has "an attractive investment environment", Wazani said that investors look for easy investment procedures and promising opportunities, pointing to the JIC's efforts to prepare preliminary feasibility studies in various sectors.

Highlighting the ongoing cooperation between the JIC and the JBA, Tabbaa emphasised the "stable condition" of the Kingdom’s economy, pointing out that the volume of foreign investments in various sectors in Jordan totals $36 billion.

Khoury, for his part, expressed the readiness of the Jordanian embassy in Italy to provide "all facilitations" for businesspeople seeking to move their investments to Amman, stressing that Italian companies, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, are looking for international investment partnerships. 

He called for developing promotional plans and investment opportunities that match the new investment trends emerging from the coronavirus pandemic, the statement said. 

According to several statistics and reports, Jordanian expatriates constitute at least 14 per cent of the Kingdom’s total population, with the majority of them residing in the Gulf states, the US and Europe, among other countries, Barmawi said, urging the government to provide more support and incentives to encourage expatriates to move their businesses and investments to the Kingdom.