Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development : Minister Müller in talks with Jordanian government regarding investments in economic development, crafts and trades, and infrastructure

Press re­lease of 26.01.2016 |

Am­man - An in­vest­ment and in­fra­struc­ture pro­gramme to­gether with tar­geted mea­sures to pro­mote eco­nomic de­vel­op­ment are planned, to help Jor­dan get to grips with the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion. Jor­dan, a coun­try with a pop­u­la­tion of 6.5 mil­lion, has ac­cepted al­most one mil­lion Syr­ian refugees. In talks with the Jor­dan­ian gov­ern­ment, Fed­eral Min­is­ter Gerd Müller has been sound­ing out pos­si­bil­i­ties for cre­at­ing le­gal op­tions for Syr­ian refugees to find work in Jor­dan.

Com­ment­ing on the sit­u­a­tion in Jor­dan, Min­is­ter Müller said: 'Al­most 90 per cent of the Syr­ian refugees in Jor­dan have found a place to stay in vil­lages and small towns. By in­vest­ing in the in­fra­struc­ture of these lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties, for ex­am­ple by build­ing hous­ing, schools and com­mu­nity cen­tres, we can help cre­ate jobs for tens of thou­sands of refugees and lo­cal peo­ple. This will make stay­ing in the re­gion a vi­able op­tion for the refugees and at the same time boost the lo­cal econ­omy. With an in­vest­ment and in­fra­struc­ture pro­gramme like this we are tak­ing an im­por­tant step in the di­rec­tion of a Mar­shall Plan for the re­gion. We need some kind of Mar­shall Plan in or­der to be able to deal with the refugee cri­sis and so that Syria can be re­built once the war is over.'

This year the Fed­eral Min­istry for Eco­nomic Co­op­er­a­tion and De­vel­op­ment (BMZ) is launch­ing a pro­gramme aimed at cre­at­ing jobs for Syr­ian refugees in the re­gion. Fur­ther­more, tar­geted mea­sures are planned to specif­i­cally en­cour­age the found­ing of new busi­nesses in both the com­mer­cial and the trades sec­tor. The is work­ing on the de­vel­op­ment of ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing pro­grammes specif­i­cally for this pur­pose, for ex­am­ple in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Ger­man-Jor­dan­ian Uni­ver­sity in Am­man. The aim is to give refugees the pos­si­bil­ity to earn a liv­ing and sup­port them­selves and their fam­i­lies, thereby mo­bil­is­ing in­vest­ments in the re­gion.

Dur­ing his visit to Jor­dan, Min­is­ter Müller was able to see at first hand the ac­tiv­i­ties Ger­many is en­gaged in with a view to de­vel­op­ing in­fra­struc­ture and boost­ing the econ­omy. For in­stance, thanks to Ger­man sup­port, 800,000 peo­ple now have ac­cess to a proper wa­ter sup­ply, 200,000 peo­ple have elec­tric­ity and, over the last two years, 130,000 Syr­ian refugee chil­dren have been able to go to school. Over the past two years the has tripled its fund­ing for ac­tiv­i­ties to com­bat the cri­sis in Syria and Iraq, in­vest­ing a to­tal of 640 mil­lion eu­ros in these mea­sures.

In the af­ter­noon, Min­is­ter Müller em­barked on the next stage of his jour­ney, trav­el­ling to Mersin in Turkey. The third and fi­nal des­ti­na­tion on this Mid­dle East visit will be north­ern Iraq.