Jordan Manufacturing
Fertilizer plant, Al Aqabah
The manufacturing sector had two tiers. On one level were the
large-scale, wholly or partially state-owned industrial
establishments that produced chemicals, petrochemicals,
fertilizers, and mineral products. These manufacturing entities
included the "big five" companies that constituted the pillars of
the industrial base: the Jordan Phosphate Mines Company, the Jordan
Fertilizer Industries Company, the Arab Potash Company,
Intermediate Petrochemical Industries, the Jordan Cement Factories
Company, and also a recently enlarged oil refinery at Az Zarqa that
employed about 3,000 persons. The chemical products sector employed
about 4,000 workers at about seventy facilities. Because these
industries were established to process the products of Jordan's
mining and extractive sector, it was difficult to distinguish
between the industrial and natural resource sectors of the economy
(see Jordan - Natural Resources
, this ch.).
Petroleum refining contributed 39 percent to gross output
manufacturing; fertilizers, potash, and other nonmetallic minerals,
13 percent; industrial chemicals, about 8 percent; and iron, steel,
and fabricated metal products, about 10 percent. Thus, about 70
percent of total manufacturing output was closely linked to the
mining and extractive sector. The high contribution of these
industries to the total value of manufacturing output resulted in
part from the high underlying value of the natural resource inputs
on which they were based. The same industries accounted for about
57 percent of total value added in manufacturing (see
table 10,
Appendix).
On the other level were small or medium-sized light
manufacturing entities, many privately owned, that produced a wide
array of consumer products. Many of these entities were cottage
industries or small bazaar workshops. By one estimate, in 1984 more
than 75 percent of the approximately 8,500 manufacturing companies
employed fewer than five persons each. The most important, in order
of contribution to gross output value, were food processing,
tobacco and cigarettes, paper and packaging, beverages, furniture,
textiles, and plastics. These companies and other smaller
industries such as publishing, glass and rubber products,
electrical equipment, and machinery--each of which contributed less
than 1 percent of total manufacturing output value--together
contributed about 30 percent of gross manufacturing output and 43
percent of manufacturing value added.
Data as of December 1989
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