Competitive Advantage of SMEs

Abstract

Jordan’s mining industry is one of the main contributors to economic growth and a principal generator of national income. The government of Jordan paid special attention to this sector and gave the Natural Resources Authority (NRA) the responsibility of supervising the exploring, prospecting and mining activities in Jordan. Investment in the mining sector in 2000 was 1.12 billion US dollar. The extractive industries share of this investment is (67.8%), while the remaining (32.2%) are investments in manufacturing industries, which depend on mining products. The contribution of exports of the mining sector to national export for the years (1995-2001) ranges from 37-45% (NRA 2003). Large-scale industries in Jordan consist mainly of phosphate and potash mining. Exports of phosphate, potash and cement represented 90% of the mining sector’s export in 1999 (JIB 2003). Today the Jordanian stone industry experienced a significant growth due to the recent trade agreements with the US and the EU. Since then, the stone industry has received a lot of attention, and is expanding. Figure (1.4) shows the continuous growth of the natural stone from 1997 till 2003. Large investments, using the state of the art technology, are being deployed to achieve such goals (JMOP 2003). The processing equipment utilized by the Jordanian companies had a positive trend over the past 10 years with a (250%) increase during the years 2000-2002 (JMOP 2003).