AMMAN: Al-Qarya Food and Vegetable Oil Industries Co. last week faulted the government and banks for its misfortune.
In a letter to the Jordan Securities Commission (JSC), Chairman Tareq Khoury evoked the 2008, 2009 and 2010 events when the company was battered by the international financial crises which afflicted all industrial and commercial sectors. “Al-Qarya heeded the government recommendations in 2008 to all industrial and commercial sectors to stockpile large quantities of food products as strategic reserve in order to circumvent the expected surge in their prices, ” the chairman wrote.
“To ensure food security and preempt the expected price surge of foodstuffs as a result of crude oil price reaching $105 per barrel at that time, we responded immediately to the advice of the Prime Ministry,” he said. “But, regrettably, international vegetable oil prices dropped afterwards due to the quick fall in crude oil prices,” Khoury added in his letter.
According to the chairman, who is also a member of the Lower House of Parliament, further trouble piled up when the government exempted imported vegetable oil from customs and sales tax bringing the firm to a standstill in that period. Khoury also mentioned the extremely high interest rate on the loans extended by Jordanian banks to the company, in spite of the reduction initiated by the central bank, as another main reason for the losses incurred in 2009.
