Jordan

Jordan: Fiscal Strain Against a Steady Security Posture

Jordan's economy stood at $53.4 billion in GDP for 2024, per the World Bank's World Development Indicators, with GDP per capita at $4,618 the same year and a population of 11.55 million. The fiscal picture is tighter: the IMF's World Economic Outlook puts government debt at 81.8 percent of GDP for 2026, a level that constrains room for maneuver on both social spending and defense modernization. Central bank reserves stood at $16.32 billion in 2025, according to IMF International Financial Statistics.

Defense spending is comparatively heavy for the size of the economy. SIPRI's 2025 military expenditure data puts Jordan's outlay at roughly $2.56 billion, equivalent to 4.557 percent of GDP on SIPRI's own GDP series — a figure that should not be read against the World Bank's GDP estimate above, since the two series diverge. Active personnel stood at 101,000 as of 2022 per the Correlates of War National Material Capabilities (NMC) dataset, which also scores Jordan's composite index of national capability (CINC) at 0.0017 for that year.

On governance, V-Dem's 2025 data (v15) scores Jordan at 0.282 on electoral democracy and 0.274 on liberal democracy, alongside a state capacity score of 0.774 — indicating a state apparatus that functions well above its democratic-competition scores would suggest.

Energy figures are mixed in currency. Our World in Data's energy series shows primary energy consumption of 0.397 exajoules in 2023 and electricity generation of 23.67 terawatt-hours in 2024 — both reasonably current. Production data is not: both oil output (0.014 TWh) and gas output (1.111 TWh) are drawn from 2016, a decade-old snapshot that predates significant shifts in the region's energy posture and should not be treated as a current baseline.

Data gaps

Oil and gas production figures are frozen at 2016 and should be flagged as stale rather than current capacity. No figures for arms imports, nuclear posture, or alliance commitments appear in this bundle. The SIPRI milex-to-GDP ratio uses SIPRI's internal GDP series, not the World Bank's $53.4 billion WDI figure cited above; the two are not interchangeable and no attempt has been made to reconcile them here.

Sources: World Bank WDI, IMF WEO, IMF IFS, SIPRI Milex, COW NMC, V-Dem v15, Our World in Data (Energy).