Oman – The boycott campaigns in Jordan continue for goods, brands and international companies in support of the Israeli occupation after 18 months of aggression against the Gaza Strip, which led to the recovery of local products and contributed to the reinstating the purchasing power of the Jordanian consumer towards local products.
The Jordanians’ appetite for their local industry was not an alternative to the foreign product, but rather to increase the economic awareness of the quality of the Jordanian industry and its ability to compete, and consider it an effective alternative and permanently, which led to a high demand for them and motivating Jordanian companies to develop their products and expand their distribution.
National achievement
The Jordanian General Statistics Department revealed a few days ago that the gross domestic product increased during the last quarter of 2024 by 2.7% compared to the same period in 2023, driven by achieving the main economic sectors of distinguished growth rates, despite the repercussions imposed by regional conditions and geopolitical variables that affected various productive sectors.
Thus, the growth of the Jordanian economy exceeded the expected rate of growth for the last quarter at 2.5%.
The union activist in the resistance of normalization, Dr. Hisham Al -Bustani, says that what was revealed by the Department of Statistics means that “the boycott campaigns of the products supporting the occupation were launched in the popular sense since the second intifada and the invasion of the West Bank in 2002, and it continued at a varying pace until it escalated in the deep way that we see today since the beginning of the Zionist aggression and massacres on Gaza in the battle of the Al -Aqsa Flood” in October. First 2023.
In a comment to Al -Jazeera Net, he adds that the popular boycott during this period after the aggression against Gaza took a greater dimension than all the previous boycott campaigns, in terms of its size, extent, impact, and permanence.
It is not necessary that it is not necessary to see the companies supporting the occupation entity a great influence to change its path, but it is sufficient for its market share to decrease from sales against their competitors from national companies to bother the consumer requests because it is without the main force of the consumer becomes without value and disappears.
The boycott is a weapon
Al -Bustani explains that the boycott is not a meaningless absurd tool but rather a tool for achieving a political goal. If the goal is achieved with the consumer’s regularity in provocation to the foreign product according to a collective movement such as the boycott movements, this leads to a major change.
The head of the Jordanian and Amman industry rooms, Eng. Fathi Al -Jaghbir, says that the demand for the products of local companies has witnessed a remarkable escalation since the Korona pandemic, and that has strengthened the recent Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip, explaining that the demand for local Jordanian products increased significantly with the start of the aggression on Gaza.
Al -Jaghbir believes that the demand for the local product has reached weakness in high confidence in the Jordanian product, its high quality, and its competing prices, in addition to the success of the popular boycott campaigns of foreign goods, as the citizen found multiple local alternatives to the same commodities, which encouraged him to boycott.
Towards the alternative
Al -Jaghbir adds that the indicators showed that the national industry has become a major source of many classes of commodities and basic materials that citizens demand, as the industrial sector produces 1500 different commodities, including the food industries whose products reach 60% of the size of the local market.
The President of the Jordan Chamber of Industry explains that the progress achieved by the national industry during the recent period within many levels is mainly due to the development in its productive processes and its keeping pace with modern technology.
He says that the industrial sector still achieves many positive results, the most prominent of which is in its leadership of the wheel of economic growth, as its contribution reaches more than 44% in the national economy directly and indirectly due to its qualitative connections and its support for the performance of various economic sectors.
In turn, youth activist Maram Abu Hussein says that buying the local product is not just a consumer option, but rather a national position and an actual resistance to the occupation.
“When Jordanians buy their national industry, they support Jordanian factories, create job opportunities for the youth of the country, and strengthen their economy in the face of challenges,” she added, and this means the ability to control investments, economic security and national sovereignty of Jordan and its ability to make an independent decision away from dependency on the markets supporting the occupation.
Given the above, the economic effects of the boycott can be summarized, and the Jordanian consumer is directed to the local product, according to the following:
- The increasing demand for the local product has led many investors to pump new capital into local production and manufacturing projects that helped create job opportunities and enhance the Jordanian economy.
- With the increase in demand, Jordanian companies went to improve the quality of their products and adopt global production standards to keep pace with competition, which contributed to improving the image of the Jordanian product to the consumer.
- The popular boycott contributed to raising the level of public awareness of the importance of supporting the national economy.
The Carrefour stores chain closed all its branches in Jordan, after a broad boycott campaign that affected the companies supporting the Israeli occupation.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spwpjyhgrkm
The Jordanian government has implemented a number of programs and policies to support the industrial sector, by launching the industry support fund with funding of about 90 million dinars (127 million dollars), and is based on providing financial grants for industrial companies on which the conditions of support applies to increase their export capabilities and support production and employment rules, and a national export strategy has been launched that would help the industrial sector to increase its exports and enter foreign markets.
