Muwaqer Industrial Estate, March 4

A new trade deal with Europe, a rush of foreign investment and public works are to put 200,000 Syrian refugees to work in Jordan in what the international community has described as a radical new approach to tackling the biggest displacement crisis in decades.

Still, senior officials acknowledged that it may take several years to reach that target. Such a slow pace could keep many Syrians in limbo and possibly undercut one of the main aims of the global intervention — to quickly reduce refugee migration from struggling regional host nations to Europe.

Shifting from handouts to helping refugees sustain themselves is now seen as most effective way to deal with the fallout from a prolonged conflict that has defied a negotiated solution. The Syria war enters its sixth year later this month.

Up to now, humanitarian aid for Syrians has consistently fallen short because of the staggering needs of millions of displaced, forcing cuts in food and cash support, which helped trigger last year’s exodus of hundreds of thousands to Europe.

The new deal, described by Jordanian Planning Minister Imad Fakhoury as ‘transformative’, was struck at last month’s annual Syria aid conference in London. Jordan is the main testing ground for job creation.

Under the new pact, Jordan promises to allow up to 200,000 Syrian refugees to work legally, an idea it rejected in past due to high domestic unemployment. In exchange, Jordanian products would win easier access to European markets, meant to create new investment and jobs. Jordan would also receive hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and cheap loans for development projects.

If successful, scheme would probably mean replacing some of Jordan’s hundreds of thousands of foreign workers, mostly from Egypt or Asia, with Syrians.

Easing access to European markets would also throw a lifeline to Jordanian factories whose exports have plummeted following the conflict-driven closures of Jordan’s trade crossings to Syria and Iraq last year.

Jordanian business owners are eager to employ Syrians, seen as hard-working, but remain sceptical, said Jalal al-Debei, head of the Jordan Industrial Estates Company which administers five industrial zones with hundreds

of factories.

“They heard a lot of promises from the government, from the world, but nothing happened,” al-Debei said of the entrepreneurs.

A key element is a promise by the European Union to ease its ‘rules of origin’.

Under relaxed rules, Jordanian factories could, for example, bring in raw materials from other countries, such as fabrics from Asia, and still label the finished products as Jordan-made, and qualify for duty-free trade.

Jordan’s free trade agreement with the United States has boosted exports over the years, amounting to $1.4 billion in 2014, or five times more than to Europe.

The EU is to finalise the new rules before its summer break in August, said Andrea Matteo Fontana, the EU ambassador to Jordan.

Greater access to Europe is intended to encourage investment in five industrial zones in Jordan, but investor response is hard to predict. “At the end of the day, this is a business decision from the private sector,” Fontana said.

The plan calls for 150,000 jobs for Syrians to be created in the industrial zones and 50,000 in labour-intensive projects, such as building schools and water cisterns, he said.

Creating all 200,000 jobs could take years as per World Bank’s Chief Economist for the Middle East and North Africa, Shanta Devarajan. However, some firms could likely ramp up quickly to employ large numbers of workers, based on experiences in other special enterprise zones, Devarajan wrote in response to e-mailed questions.