Following the release of Jordan’s 2026 budget, fiscal discussions have once again focused on taxes and spending controls. While these tools remain central to fiscal management, their repeated use has not eliminated persistent deficits or rising debt pressures, pointing to deeper structural challenges.

 

What is largely missing from the discussion is an alternative that does not impose further strain on households or businesses, the economic use of idle public assets. Jordan does not suffer from a lack of assets. It suffers from a lack of mechanisms to turn those assets into steady, non-tax revenue.

 

Over decades, the state has accumulated land, buildings, infrastructure and enterprises. Many of these assets are valuable, well located and already paid for. Yet a large share generates little or no economic return, even as the budget absorbs rising debt-service costs and recurrent expenditure.

 

The 2026 budget debate therefore raises a simple but critical question: Can better management of public assets achieve what additional taxation increasingly cannot?

 

Public assets are often narrowly understood as state-owned companies. In practice, public assets include a much wider portfolio; government and municipal land, underused public buildings, infrastructure such as industrial zones and logistics facilities, partially state-owned enterprises, and concession rights that can be restructured or better monetized.

 

The issue is not ownership. It is utilization. Jordan lacks a unified national framework that identifies these assets, values them properly and classifies them according to their economic potential. As a result, large portions of national wealth remain fiscally invisible.

 

The evidence of underutilization is not difficult to find. Government-owned land within and around cities often remains undeveloped or is used for low-value administrative purposes. Older public buildings operate far below capacity, despite their commercial potential. Some state-owned enterprises record modest accounting profits yet deliver returns well below the capital invested in them. Industrial and logistics facilities frequently operate below optimal capacity, even though demand exists.None of these assets are inherently unproductive. They are simply unmanaged from an economic perspective.

 

International experience shows that these matters. Studies on public wealth management indicate that activating even a limited share of idle or underperforming public assets can generate meaningful fiscal returns. In practical terms, bringing 20–30 percent of such assets into effective economic use can yield annual revenues equivalent to 1–2 percent of GDP over several years.

 

For Jordan, this would translate into hundreds of millions of dinars each year — not only through direct income, but also through lower subsidies, better capital efficiency and reduced reliance on borrowing. Importantly, these are non-tax revenues. They do not weaken domestic demand or raise the cost of living.

 

Past efforts to address this issue have produced limited results. The reasons are well known, fragmented asset ownership across institutions, the absence of a comprehensive public asset registry, weak governance arrangements and, above all, the persistent confusion between economic operation and privatization. This confusion has made reform politically sensitive and administratively cautious.

 

Yet activating public assets does not require selling them. It requires managing them differently.

 

A workable approach begins with treating public assets as a portfolio rather than as isolated holdings. This means establishing a central asset management function responsible for identification, valuation and performance monitoring. Ownership would remain with the state, while operations could be delegated through long-term leases, management contracts or public-private partnerships (PPP).

 

Equally important is the fiscal link. Revenues generated from asset activation should be explicitly directed toward debt reduction or productivity-enhancing capital investment, rather than absorbed into routine spending. Transparency is essential. Regular public reporting on asset performance would help build confidence and accountability.

 

As the 2026 budget is prepared, the choice facing policymakers should not be framed narrowly as taxes versus austerity. A third option exists, one that strengthens fiscal sustainability without imposing additional social costs.

 

Jordan’s public assets represent silent wealth. The question is no longer whether that wealth exists, but whether it will be managed as part of the solution to the country’s fiscal future.