Khaberni - The Cabinet discussed in its session held today, Sunday, chaired by Prime Minister Dr. Jaafar Hassan, the reality of the work of municipalities and the mechanisms for governance of the work of the City and Village Development Bank and improving its performance, in the context of ensuring an enhanced level of municipal services provided to citizens and maintaining them with high quality.
Accordingly, the Cabinet decided to approve the recommendations of the board of directors of the City and Village Development Bank, including a debt restructuring plan owed by the municipalities to the bank, aimed at enabling them to pay off the bank's debts and easing their financial burdens, and improving the services provided to the citizens on one hand, and strengthening the bank's financial position and ensuring its cash flows on the other hand, enabling it to provide liquidity for emergency cases for municipalities.
The municipal debt restructuring plan includes scheduling the accumulated debt over the years, enabling them to repay the principal of the loans, and exempting them from a total amount of 170 million dinars in interests that they were not initially paying, in addition to reducing the interest rates from 7.5% gradually according to the age of the schedule to range only between 0.5% to 2%; this is to enable the municipalities to pay off their debt and enhance their ability to provide services to the citizens.
The plan obliges municipalities to submit a comprehensive financial reform plan that includes clear measures to reduce expenditures and improve revenues, and a municipal council decision approving the scheduling for the financially struggling municipalities; to ensure the sustainability of this plan and adherence to it; contributing to the improvement of the work reality of municipalities in the long term, and enhancing their financial performance enabling them to refine their services.
The financial scheduling plan aims to set the municipalities on the right track in terms of improving their financial revenues and enabling them to control their expenditures, as well as improving the financial performance of the City and Village Development Bank and governance of its work and providing the necessary liquidity for it to perform its necessary municipal work.
In a related context, the Cabinet listened to a briefing presented by the Minister of Local Administration, Engineer Walid Al-Masri, about the reality of the work of municipal committees that were formed following the dissolution of municipal councils at the beginning of July last year.
Al-Masri confirmed that the municipal committees were able to achieve a qualitative development on four levels during the past period: environmental performance (cleanliness), financial performance, administrative performance, and services, according to a field reality survey conducted to evaluate the work of the committees.
In terms of systems related to supporting the tourism sector, the Cabinet approved the system of Jordanian tourism and travel offices and companies for the year 2025.
The system is for the purposes of encouraging investment in the tourism sector and simplifying the procedures and requirements for classifying Jordanian tourism and travel offices and companies, reducing the financial guarantees required from some office categories, and cancelling the license issued by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities.
The system specifies the categories of offices, the conditions for their classification, the services they provide, and the obligations incumbent on them according to the classification category.
The council also approved the guide services system for tourists for the year 2025; for the purposes of regulating the practice of the profession of tourist guide services, determining the conditions related to its practice, as well as determining the classification categories of tourist guides and the conditions for obtaining a classification for each tourist guide.
The system also defines the obligations incumbent on the tourist guide when practicing the profession, and cases of granting temporary permission.
In the context of financial governance of university operations, the Cabinet approved the reward system and savings fund for employees at Al-Hussein bin Talal University for the year 2025.
The system comes with the purpose of merging the legal provisions related to reward and savings for employees at Al-Hussein bin Talal University into a single system, and unifying these legal provisions in the university and aligning them with the legislation in force in other official Jordanian universities.
In the context of international cooperation, the Cabinet decided to approve the Kingdom's accession to the Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes, in alignment with local laws and regulations.
The convention aims to ensure optimal use of surface and ground water between countries, and to enhance international cooperation in the areas of monitoring and information exchange, research and development, environmental damage prevention, and addressing water challenges.
The council also decided to approve a cooperation agreement between the Ministry of Social Development and the Helping Hand Relief Association.
The agreement aims to implement social, humanitarian, and developmental programs, and to enhance cooperation and exchange of expertise in these areas.
On another note, the Cabinet decided to appoint Waseem Mohammad Rashad Al-Haddad as the General Manager of the City and Village Development Bank, after he scored the highest marks in the assessment results of the competition conducted under the governmental leadership system.
