Series Evaluation Insights for Policy and Programming
The evaluation finds that the SRRP in Jordan substantially strengthened key regulatory institutions and the PPP framework, but achieved only partial results on competition, pricing, and pro poor impact, mainly because of weak political backing, limited coordination, and design flaws in governance and monitoring. Overall sustainability is mixed, with solid regulatory outputs but fragile institutional arrangements and contested public perceptions of privatization and PPP.
Context
Jordan entered the SRRP period after an ambitious economic reform and structural adjustment drive in the 1990s, aimed at building a more self reliant, market oriented economy and attracting domestic and foreign investment. The economy had already begun a broad privatization programme in 1996, covering telecommunications, public road transport, air transport, energy, and mining, with the aim of expanding private sector participation and improving competitiveness.
The SRRP was financed under the EU MEDA Regulation through Financing Agreement JOR/2001/0504, with an EU contribution of 20 million euro and implementation from 2002 to March 2010. It focused on economic infrastructure sectors that are central to growth and trade, especially telecommunications, electricity, civil aviation, and cross cutting regulatory reform including transport and competition policy.
The development challenge was to create credible, independent regulators and a transparent framework for private participation in infrastructure, so that services would become more efficient, better in quality, and more accessible, while reducing fiscal burdens from infrastructure subsidies. The programme was highly relevant to Jordan’s strategy of liberalising utilities, increasing private investment, and aligning with EU standards, and it was consistent with EU country strategies and the European Neighbourhood Policy.
Intervention Overview
The overall aim of the SRRP was to enhance the economic efficiency of infrastructure in Jordan in terms of costs, quality, range, and availability of services, and to ease budgetary pressure from subsidies. The specific objectives were to develop effective infrastructure regulation in line with international practice, strengthen state capacity to promote private participation in infrastructure in a consistent and transparent way, and increase competition in infrastructure services.
The programme comprised four main sector components for the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC), the Electricity Regulatory Commission (ERC), the Civil Aviation Authority later Civil Aviation Regulatory Commission (CAA/CARC), and the Executive Privatisation Commission (EPC), plus a cross sector component and a Project Management Unit. A notable cross cutting innovation was the creation of a Master’s Degree in Competition and Regulation at the University of Jordan, designed as a sustainable source of regulatory expertise.
Implementation instruments included long term technical assistance projects for each regulator and for the EPC, initial analytical studies on regulatory integration and staff compensation, a cross sector support window, and a Programme Steering Committee chaired by the Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation (MoPIC) as government beneficiary. The EU Delegation managed core contracts and approvals, while the EPC hosted the PMU and also managed cross sector resources, creating both opportunities and conflicts of interest.
Evidence: What Worked
The evaluation finds that the SRRP significantly strengthened the three core regulatory authorities for telecommunications, electricity, and civil aviation, helping them to adopt modern regulatory procedures, legal frameworks, and management systems. Most of the first layer regulatory documents and procedures in these sectors were developed under the programme, including sector regulations, methodologies, and internal systems aligned with international practice.
In telecommunications, TRC emerged as a driver of liberalisation in post and telecom services, with an open licensing regime considered advanced by international standards and measures that expanded competition in mobile and broadband services. The granting of the first third generation mobile licence in 2009 and a progressive decline in tariffs for several communication services illustrate concrete regulatory outcomes that benefited consumers and businesses.
In civil aviation, the programme supported the drafting and implementation of the new Civil Aviation Law, the separation of regulatory functions from service delivery, the establishment and consolidation of CARC, and alignment with European and ICAO standards including preparation for an EU comprehensive aviation agreement. Safety oversight, quality assurance, and economic regulation functions were notably strengthened.
The EPC’s capacity to structure and promote PPP and privatization transactions improved considerably, with the design of an institutional strengthening plan, detailed job descriptions, and the development of a PPP manual and PPP project cycle consistent with international best practice. Although many pilot PPP transactions were delayed or inconclusive, the institutional learning contributed to the official launch of a national PPP programme in 2009 and to subsequent donor support from the EU, USAID, and the World Bank.
Training and capacity building were extensive: regulators and EPC staff received targeted in country and international training, and EPC managers undertook study tours to European PPP programmes. A Master’s Degree in Competition and Regulation at the University of Jordan produced at least nineteen graduates in its first two cohorts and was designed to provide a continuous supply of regulatory specialists for Jordan and potentially the region.
From a macro perspective, Jordan’s broader privatization programme completed around seventy one transactions yielding more than two point six billion United States dollars in proceeds, which were used to reduce public debt, settle enterprise liabilities, finance socio economic projects, and cover social security contributions for employees of privatized enterprises. Impact studies supported by the EPC found improvements in profitability, efficiency, leverage, training, and often service quality in many privatized firms, particularly in telecommunications and transport.
Evidence: What Did Not Work
Despite institutional successes, the SRRP did not demonstrate clear impact on poverty reduction or broad based social development, and links from regulatory reform to inclusive growth remained largely assumed rather than measured. Except for telecommunications, consumer prices and tariffs in regulated infrastructure sectors did not significantly decrease during the programme period, and rising international fuel prices and supply shocks overshadowed potential price effects.
The programme fell short in fostering integration among regulatory entities and in establishing a coherent, cross sector regulatory oversight model. The initial ambition to merge or strongly coordinate infrastructure regulators was not realised, and regulators largely continued to operate in isolation with limited cross learning, while efforts in land transport regulation came late and remained modest.
Political leadership and ownership were weak: the programme lacked strong backing from the highest political levels, and MoPIC’s role as beneficiary was often ceremonial, with limited capacity to steer or correct course. The Steering Committee met only once and did not function as a strategic coordination body, which left the five beneficiaries to implement components largely in isolation and undermined coherence and visibility.
The PPI and PPP agenda under the EPC faced substantial delays, policy reversals, and inter-ministerial disagreements that prevented pilot transactions from reaching signature, despite advanced preparation for projects in medical and industrial waste, tourism facilities, wastewater, and municipal solid waste management. The evaluation documents repeated cycles of changed directives, contested risk allocation, and limited understanding of PPP among sector ministries and municipalities, which eroded momentum and credibility.
The Master’s programme in Competition and Regulation, though conceptually strong, suffered from weak ownership at the University of Jordan, limited engagement from regulators, and fragile financing after the programme ended, which put its sustainability and potential networking role at risk. Moreover, competition policy capacity in some regulatory bodies remained shallow, with staff sometimes unclear about the content of the Competition Law and the distinction between competitiveness and competition.
Lessons Learned
The evaluation distils three major transferable lessons that are highly relevant for policy and programming. First, regulatory oversight bodies are only as strong as the political leadership that supports them; their effectiveness depends on consistent political backing, integration with wider reform agendas, and coordination with other institutions, not only on technical design.
Second, the development of a regulatory reform agenda is severely hampered when monitoring and evaluation are neglected; in Jordan, the absence of systematic data on regulatory performance, market outcomes, and distributional effects reduced the ability to demonstrate gains and to mobilise coalitions for deeper reforms. Logframes were weak, indicators were rarely quantified, and mid-term evaluation and auditing provisions were not implemented, which undermined accountability.
Third, public private infrastructure initiatives require intense, early, and sustained dialogue across government and with stakeholders; PPP is inherently complex, and without shared understanding of fiscal implications, risk sharing, and service obligations, projects are likely to stall or be perceived as opaque and risky. The Jordan experience shows that insufficient coordination at project inception severely constrains later stages and can turn technically sound transactions into politically fragile ones.
Implications for Policy and Programming
For the Government of Jordan, the findings suggest an urgent need to anchor regulatory reform and PPP policy in a clear, politically owned framework that defines roles, decision rights, and accountability mechanisms across ministries and agencies. Establishing a central regulatory oversight unit or council with strong technical capacity and political mandate could help align sector regulators, oversee regulatory quality, and ensure coherence with fiscal and social objectives.
Policy makers should systematically integrate monitoring and evaluation into the design of future regulatory and PPP initiatives, including baseline data, clear outcome indicators, and transparent reporting on prices, access, service quality, investment, and fiscal impacts. This would help address public distrust around privatization and PPP and inform debates with evidence rather than speculation, especially in a context where privatization has become synonymous with fears of corruption.
For donors, including the EU, the evaluation points to the importance of coupling technical assistance with strong political economy analysis and explicit strategies to manage inter-ministerial coordination, stakeholder engagement, and communication. Complex, multi stakeholder programmes should be accompanied by external monitoring mechanisms and adequate resources for evaluation, rather than reallocating these funds to extend technical assistance.
Potential for Scaling and Transferability
The SRRP experience confirms that it is possible to construct relatively sophisticated regulatory frameworks and PPP systems in a relatively short period, especially when building on strong sector demand as in telecommunications and civil aviation. These technical models, including manuals, procedures, and regulatory documents, are broadly transferable to other middle-income countries seeking to converge with EU or international standards.
However, scaling the approach requires enabling political and institutional conditions, including clear government commitment to an independent regulator model, realistic timelines for legislative change, and capacity to retain skilled staff despite public pay constraints. It also requires that PPP pipelines be embedded in credible long term infrastructure strategies and medium term expenditure frameworks, so that projects are seen as integral to national development planning rather than isolated donor driven experiments.
The Master’s Degree in Competition and Regulation illustrates a promising but under exploited model for sustainable capacity development that could be replicated in other countries, provided that universities develop genuine ownership and secure long term funding, and that regulators and ministries actively use graduates and research outputs. Without such integration, academic programmes risk becoming detached from practice and losing their intended impact on regulatory quality.
Methodological Notes
The evaluation was an ex post exercise carried out almost two years after the end of technical assistance, with the aim of assessing past performance, impact, sustainability, and drawing lessons and recommendations. It applied the OECD DAC criteria of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability, as well as EC specific criteria of coherence and Community added value.
Methods included document review, analysis of programme logframes and monitoring reports, and extensive interviews with beneficiary institutions such as TRC, ERC, CARC, EPC, MoPIC, and the University of Jordan, as well as donors and other stakeholders. The report notes that it is not a full impact evaluation, since systematic quantitative impact analysis and long term counterfactual evidence were not available, and weaknesses in the original monitoring system limited the strength of attribution.
Stakeholder Perspectives
Beneficiary regulators generally judged the SRRP as effective and relevant, emphasising that the programme delivered the technical assistance and training they needed to align with international standards and to accelerate access to European expertise that would have been difficult to procure through normal government procedures. Many saw SRRP as the first major capacity development programme in their sectors, with tangible improvements in internal systems and regulatory tools.
MoPIC, as political counterpart, considered the programme successful and expressed interest in learning from institutional development experiences, but also acknowledged its own limited capacity to supervise such a complex intervention and to enforce strategic decisions, such as activating the Steering Committee or following up on monitoring recommendations. The University of Jordan valued the academic content and international support for the Master’s programme, yet felt under rewarded, and did not fully integrate the programme into its strategic priorities, which reduced its visibility and alumni engagement.
Trade unions and segments of civil society were more critical, especially regarding privatization and labour issues; although formal redundancies were often handled through negotiated benefits or transfers, union concerns about collective dismissals and alleged violations of labour law in some transactions persisted. Public debates, particularly in the wake of the Arab Spring, increasingly framed privatization as a vector of corruption and mismanagement, prompting calls in Parliament and government for comprehensive reviews and possible reversal or renationalisation of some deals.
Further Resources and Links
Relevant organisations and resources related to the SRRP include the Delegation of the European Union to Jordan and the European Commission’s EuropeAid cooperation instruments, which financed and supervised the programme. The Executive Privatisation Commission (now operating as the central PPP institution) provides information on Jordan’s PPP overview and privatisation experience, and played a central role in implementing transactions and hosting the PPP programme.
Key regulatory counterparts include the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC), the Electricity Regulatory Commission (ERC), and the Civil Aviation Regulatory Commission (CARC), whose websites and annual reports contain updated data on sector performance and regulatory measures that build on SRRP outputs. The University of Jordan’s School of Business hosts information on the Master’s Degree in Competition and Regulation, developed with support from the College of Europe.
The consulting firms ADE and Lambard Management Consultants, which coordinated and led the evaluation, together with sectoral technical assistance providers, offer further documentation on methods and lessons from regulatory reform and PPP in infrastructure. For broader context, Jordan Times articles and Economist Intelligence Unit country reports cited in the evaluation provide contemporaneous accounts of public debates on privatization, energy pricing, and the political economy of reform.
Report Citation
Weitzenegger, Karsten. Final Evaluation of Support to Regulatory Reform and Privatisation in infrastructure in Jordan, JOR/2001/0504, ADE Consortium, Lambard Management Consultants, Dublin 2012.
Disclaimer: The author participated in this evaluation. The opinions expressed are solely those of the author and cannot be attributed to any affiliated organizations. Portions of the text and images were supported by artificial intelligence.