Jordanian Finance Minister Ziyad Fariz said Saturday that foreign investments in the country had reached 3 billion dollars last year, thanks to government policies promoting the investment infrastructure, DPA reported. "Foreign investments in Jordan reached 3 billion dollars last year or 22 per cent of the country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP)," Fariz said in a statement summing up the country's economic achievements over the past year as the country was celebrating Independence Day. He expected this figure to go up substantially this year following the government's signing of projects totalling 2.5 billion dollars during the World Economic Forum (WEF) conference which was held last week at the Dead Sea resort. Fariz also reported a 30-per-cent rise in the country's reserves of foreign currencies to 6.1 billion dollars at the end of 2006 from 4.7 billion dollars at the end of 2005. He said that public finance reforms enabled the government to curtail the public budget deficit after foreign assistance this year to 4.4 per cent from 5.3 per cent as a ratio of the GDP. He expected the Jordanian economy to post growth rates more than 6 per cent in the coming few years.
