Javna recovering from global crisis as Gulf markets get better

The Amman-based company said that it has started to overcome the effects of the slowdown that has negatively impacted its activity during the past few months, adding that the firm has picked up at a pace parallel to that of regional and international peers.

Javna, which is active in the Gulf region and North Africa, resorted to economic precautionary measures with a view to survive the sweeping crisis that hit the company's key markets.

Javna's CEO Mansour Mansour said that the company's board handled the economic problem with professionalism and transparency, adopting an approach based on redistributing the company's operations among its branches to ease the financial burden and reduce expenditure.

He added:

"The fact that Javna has several branches operating in Arab and European markets, especially those among the least hit by the crisis, has helped us overcome this undesirable situation. Besides, the wide clientele base expanding across sectors was also a positive factor, not to mention the strategic partnerships Javna entered at the beginning of 2007 and 2008 with Asian firms and international organizations that partly helped address the crisis."

It is worth mentioning that the ICT sector has been the third industry most harmed by the global financial crisis after banking and real estate.

Mansour emphasized that stability is gradually returning to Gulf markets, where Javna is the most active, pinpointing the findings of a recent study conducted by Leaders Presents. According to the survey, 53.4% of business leaders and top executives in the Gulf area said that they increased their investments during 2009 despite the consequences of the global crisis.

The study also revealed that 34.6% of investors did not trim down their investments in the period in question, compared with 12% who restructured their investments.

The survey, which involved 600 business leaders and top executives in the region, forecast that the Gulf area would recover from the effects of the global financial crisis early 2011 at the furthest, as 11% of respondents said that recovery would be complete at the beginning of 2010 and 38% said full recovery will occur mid 2010, whereas 50% said it would take until early 2011 to see the region completely healthy again.