Under the patronage of His Excellency, the Minister of Industry and Trade, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) celebrated today its 40th Anniversary in an official ceremony held in cooperation with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
The ceremony, included statements by UNDP Resident Representative, a.i. in Jordan and the Representative and Head of UNIDO Regional Office for Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Jordan, who arrived from Lebanon especially for this occasion. The ceremony will also include a presentation of UNIDO’s most important achievements in Jordan and around the world, as well as speeches by Jordanian beneficiaries of UNIDO’s local projects.
Established in 1966, UNIDO became a specialized United Nations agency in 1985. As part of the UN system, UNIDO has responsibility for promoting industrialization throughout the developing world, in cooperation with its 171 Member States. Its headquarters are in Vienna, and has an active presence in the field through its 29 country and regional offices and 14 offices and the 14 Investment and Technology Promotion Offices and a number of offices that are concerned with specific aspects of its work.
In the framework of its function as a global forum, UNIDO generates and disseminates knowledge related to industrial matters and provides a platform for the various actors in the public and private sectors, civil society organizations and the policy-making community in general to enhance cooperation, establish dialogue, and develop partnerships in order to address challenges.
As a technical cooperation agency, UNIDO focuses its efforts in three main areas:
1. Alleviating poverty through the implementation of productive projects;
2. Enhancing trade and investment;
3. Conserving the environment and rationalizing energy uses and clean production.
The UNIDO office in Jordan was established within UNDP premises in August 2005 with a view to implementing vital projects that cope with the Jordanian Government’s quest for the advancement of economic development in the Kingdom in the framework of UNDP-UNIDO technical cooperation in support of the private sector.
In recognition of the importance of the private sector’s role in the area of eliminating poverty at the local level, this cooperation aims at developing small and medium-scale enterprises, habilitating and introducing entrepreneurs, especially in the field of agro-industries, to the methods and tools of financial analysis, and training owners of small and medium projects in resolving obstacles and polishing their skills in order to develop and improve the performance of their projects.
It is hoped that this cooperation will result in fulfilling the UN ambition of achieving the Millennium Development Goals for Jordan, especially in the area of halving the numbers of the poor by the year 2015.
For further details, please contact Mr. Esam Alqararah, Head of UNIDO Operations in Jordan at 566 8171 ext 612