Figure 8. Land Use and Other Economic Activities, 1989

Manufacturing contributed about 14 percent of GDP in the late 1980s. Much manufacturing activity related to exploitation of natural resources and to the mining sÍÍÍÍector. Although extractive industries were distributed throughout the country, about 90 percent of both small and large manufacturing entities were concentrated in the north, in an industrial belt between Amman and Az Zarqa (see fig. 8). Between 1975 and 1985, total manufacturing value added grew at roughly the same rate as GNP, at an annual average rate of 13 percent through 1980, then decelerating to about 5 percent. Employment in manufacturing grew slowly, and in the late 1980s was estimated at slightly more than 50,000, less than 10 percent of the working population. For decades the government had emphasized industrial manufacturing development over other economic sectors, but growing excess industrial capacity prompted a greater priority to agriculture and water resource development in the 1986- 90 Five-Year Plan.

Data as of December 1989