According to a publication of "the Ministry of Industry and Trade", these investments represent about 12% of the total investments in companies registered in Jordan during the first ten months of this year, which amounted to 982.4 million iraqi dinars; also representing about 32.5% of the investments by non-Jordanians, which the bulletin estimated them by 336 million iraqi dinar.
The bulletin pointed out that the number of Iraqi investors registered with the Corporations Control Office until September hit about 3927 investor; estimated volume of their investments over the past six years at about 345.7 million iraq dinars distributed to various productive sectors.
The Iraqi investments in the services sector amounted to 140.3 million iraqi dinars, while hit 127.9 million iraqi dinar in the trade sector, about 58.7 million iraqi dinar in the agriculture sector, about 15 million iraqi dinars in the industry, and about 3.5 million iraqi dinar in contracting.
According to figures issued by the Department of Lands, the Iraqis bought, during the first ten months of this year, real estates and lands valued by 76 million iraqi dinar; that is 1.9% of the total sales in this sector, and about 50% of the total sales of non-Jordanians in the same period. This replaces Iraqis on top of the list of investors in lands and real estates of non-Jordanians, followed by Kuwaitis who used to occupy the first place, Saudis ranked third, followed by holders of American citizenship then the Syrians.
Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis arrived in the Kingdom after lifting the travel ban in 1991 following the end of the first Gulf War, since that Jordan was the only legitimate outlet to get out of Iraq. While some Iraqis used Jordan conduit to travel to various countries around the world, others settled in, illegally for a large number of them, which makes it difficult to obtain accurate statistics of the number of Iraqis living in Jordan; however, they are estimated by a quarter of a million.
After the American occupation of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent disorder, many Iraqis migrated to Jordan. While the Iraqis of the first phase, which lasted until 2003, were mainly intellectuals, academics and fugitives from the system on political grounds, and many of them were poor, the second phase included large numbers of businessmen, investors and wealthy Iraqis who fled the security situation, the poor investment opportunities and the increasing incidents of kidnappings and seizure of hostages. They found in Jordan a stable country and attractive for investment because of the facilities offered by the Jordanian Investment Law.
Added to them, the Iraqi investors living abroad and wanted to be close to Iraq. The ranks of Iraqi community in Jordan, according to informal estimates, are 600 thousand and 750 thousand Iraqis.(Source)AlSabah
