New regulations designed to make it easier for thousands of Jordanians to obtain licenses to run home-based enterprises were introduced by the government last month with support from USAID.
The new regulations will help minimize startup costs and bureaucracy for some 12,000 micro and small home-based businesses, enabling them to sign legally binding contracts, and gain access to finance from banks or other financial entities so they can grow and develop, USAID said in a statement. It added that formalized, home-based businesses can contribute JD10 million directly and JD40 million indirectly to the Jordanian economy each year.
Rashad Bibars, the head of the USAID-funded Local Enterprise Support Project, said the idea for the regulations came about while his team was helping women start their own businesses.
“During the past two years we were working hand in hand with business development service providers to support micro and small enterprises who are working from home, especially women and especially in the food processing sector at this stage,” said Bibars.
“The other aspect is to support the entrepreneurial eco-system in Jordan to help more aspiring entrepreneurs to start and test their products or services from home.”
The project has supported more than 1,500 women so far and almost half of them were able to increase their revenues and to get into new markets once they received technical assistance in safety, hygiene, product development, marketing, and legal contracts to reach the markets as well as linkages with buyers for them to also understand the market’s needs.
Additionally, under the new regulation, there will be a main threshold where businesses will be taxed. But according to Bibars, the majority of these micro and small businesses will not reach that level based on the income they are earning at this stage. However, he added, the project is working hand in hand with many local institutions to provide these small businesses with incentives, including not making social security mandatory and easing the registration process by finalizing licenses in a maximum of three days.
