Ireland’s trade with Jordan approximates € 250 million per year (merchandise trade and services) over 95% of which is in Ireland’s favor. Jordan has been identified by Enterprise Ireland and by the Arab Irish Chamber of Commerce as having significant potential for the growth of trade over coming years.

The value of merchandise and service trade between Ireland and Jordan has been steadily increasing over the past 5 years. Despite the Covid 19 pandemic, trade volumes increased in 2020. This increase was partially due to the unprecedented demand of medical and pharmaceutical products (a total of €62million in pharmaceuticals were exported to Jordan in 2020). Ireland’s principal exports to Jordan include edible products essential oils and perfumes, medical and pharmaceutical products, office and data processing machines.

On January 25th, a business and outreach virtual meeting was held by the Irish Embassy and Jordan Ireland Business Association about Enhancing the pharma sector trading opportunities between Ireland, Jordan and Iraq. The virtual event hosted H.E Mazen Al-Darwazeh, Dr. Rajai Khoury, Dr. Muna Joudeh, Dr. Amal Durdanji. 

Dr. Rajai was the first to speak on Iraq Pharma. Dr. Rajai explained that the health sector in Iraq is divided into two sectors, public and private sectors. The private sector is composed from 609 scientific drug bureaus (SDB) which are the importers that sell through wholesalers and then the pharmaceuticals products are distributed to pharmacies across Iraq. Khoury group and Iraqi partners own 4 SDBs in Iraq.

Global health provides certain key services, which will help and incentivize Irish companies to do business with Jordan and Iraq:

1. Marketing, sales, and distribution in the Iraqi market.
2. Specialized pharmaceutical warehousing at QAIA.
3. Imprinting, labelling, specializing, and repacking.
4. Shipping to the MENA region and beyond.

H.E. Mazen Darwazeh gave an overview of the strengths and challenges of Jordan’s pharmaceutical sector and the benefits of expanding internationally. H.E. spoke about the strengths of investment in Jordan. He stated that Jordan is considered a human capital to the world as it has highly educated and eager work force. Jordanians demonstrated their capability all over the Arab world. Most of the pharma companies in the Arab world employ Jordanians. Moreover, Jordan follows and comply with strict international rules and regulation. Jordan is the first Arab country to implement the WTO regulations. Jordan gives RP/RF protection multinational companies. Jordan also has a first class state of law for the pharma industry and intellectual rights. All of the above makes Jordan an attractive country for investment.

H.E. Mazen Darwazeh explained the benefits of Jordan and Irish companies in partnering and conducting business together.  His excellency stressed on the stability of Jordan from an economic and political point of view. He pointed out as well that Jordan has a strategic geographical position in the world, in a result Jordan is well in facilitating business opportunities with neighbouring countries as Iraq. H.E. stated that Jordan exported $1B in pharmaceutical product in the past two years 2020 and 2021. Himka exports around $450M per year. The investment of pharma companies in Jordan reached $1B.

Dr. Muna Joudeh presented an overview on the Pharma sector in Jordan. Jordan boasts over 28,000 physicians most of whom are board certified in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada or other European countries and a growing team of nurses that are experienced in state-of-the-art patient care. Jordan is achieving success because of the importance it has placed on the development of quality healthcare as 9.3% of GDP is spent on health. Dr. Muna stated that the size of the Pharma Market in 2021 reached $415M in the private sector which increased compared by the past 2 years due to covid. It was also stated that GDP (government procurement department) is the main source of providing medicine for the public sector. The public sector market size has increase from 162M to 240M in the span of 5 years.

Key success factors of Pharmaceutical companies in Jordan:

1. Increase in Jordan’s annual population
2. High education level.
3. Government providing more support to the healthcare sector
4. Transparency in regulation put by the JDFA
5. Government focusing on encouraging medical tourism
6. Well-structured Governmental entities.
7. Guidelines and well-structured price controls.