PPP for municipalities across Jordan: how any city or town can launch a PPP program

Any municipality in Jordan can launch a PPP program in six steps: a council mandate, a small team, a pipeline of city projects, standard contracts, partners and a first pilot. The program delivers services such as parking, street lighting, waste and markets as small PPPs, with a private partner that invests, builds, operates and is paid for the service it delivers. This post sets out the route for mayors, municipal councils and city managers across Jordan’s twelve governorates, drawn from our free Municipalities guidePDF.

Why should a municipality in Jordan launch a PPP program?

Municipalities in Jordan run the services residents see every day: the lights, the bins, the markets and the car parks on their own street. They run them on tight budgets, and small PPPs let each service improve with a partner that invests, builds and operates.

A municipality already holds much of what a PPP needs. It knows which services fall short, where demand is growing and what residents ask for. It holds land, streets, buildings and markets that a private partner can invest in and run, and its permits decide how quickly a project of any size can be built. It can also measure service levels on the street and pay the partner for the results it delivers.

Without a program, a municipality meets each PPP as a one-off and rarely has the team to prepare it. A program gives it a team, standard contracts and a list of projects that can go to market one after another. Councils new to the subject can begin with the starting guide, and the public sector guides place municipalities beside ministries, regulators and Jordan’s governorates.

How can a municipality in Jordan launch a PPP program?

Any municipality in Jordan can launch a PPP program through six steps: Mandate, Team, Pipeline, Contracts, Partners and Pilot. The first steps use the staff, land and services the municipality already has, so a council can begin with a decision and a named program lead drawn from its existing departments.

1. 01Mandate. The municipal council or committee decides to launch a PPP program, with its services, its first projects and its first-year goals.
2. 02Team. The municipality names a program lead and draws engineering, legal, finance and procurement staff from its existing departments.
3. 03Pipeline. The team lists the city services and assets that suit small PPPs, ranks them by need and readiness, and groups similar projects for bundling.
4. 04Contracts. The team prepares standard contracts and output specifications for parking, lighting, waste and markets, with data and sensors written in.
5. 05Partners. The municipality brings in local companies, lenders, universities and other municipalities that will bid, finance, measure and share results.
6. 06Pilot. The municipality takes a first small-scale PPP or direct proposal from idea to tender.

How does a PPP program work for municipalities in every governorate of Jordan?

A PPP program works the same way in every governorate of Jordan, because every town has streets, lights, markets and waste to run. The six steps stay the same, and the partners change with the local economy, from industry and universities to tourism, farming and solar power.

1. 01Amman, Zarqa and Balqa. Municipal services in AmmanPDF can work with the capital’s banks and investors, municipalities in ZarqaPDF with its industrial estates, and those in BalqaPDF with its hotels and farms.
2. 02Irbid, Mafraq, Jerash and Ajloun. Municipalities in the north work beside the universities of IrbidPDF, the solar and logistics firms of MafraqPDF, the hotels and olive presses of JerashPDF and the nature lodges and farmers of AjlounPDF.
3. 03Madaba, Karak and Tafileh. Local partners include the tour operators and mosaic workshops of MadabaPDF, the industrial suppliers and farms of KarakPDF and the energy and mining firms of TafilehPDF.
4. 04Ma’an and Aqaba. In the south, partners include the solar suppliers of Ma’anPDF, the hotels of Wadi Musa and the organizations of AqabaPDF.

What can a municipality in Jordan deliver as a small PPP?

A municipality in Jordan can deliver parking, street lighting, waste collection and sorting, markets, bus stations, parks, local roads and the water and energy retrofit of public buildings as small PPPs. Each one pairs the city with a partner paid for the service it delivers, and most city services already come in small pieces.

Most of what residents notice about infrastructure is local: a street light that works, a clean market, a bus station that runs on time and a parking space they can find. Our page on small PPPs and research labs explains how many small projects run in parallel let a country test legal structures, financing models and construction methods at once.

Many Jordanian towns, especially in the north, have taken in large refugee populations, and their services now carry far more people than they were built for. The Host Municipalities guidePDF applies the same six steps to water, waste, roads, power and emergency infrastructure, with backup power, redundancy and response times written into every contract.

What does a municipal PPP team in Jordan do, and how does bundling help?

A municipal PPP team in Jordan is a small group of engineering, legal, finance and procurement staff that prepares, tenders and supervises the city’s PPPs. It follows each project from the first idea to the end of the contract and reuses model contracts, output specifications and payment terms on every new project.

Bundling lets street lights across many districts or car parks across several towns go to market as one project. Small, standard tenders suit local and regional companies, which can bid alone or on a bundle with other projects, and each new project adds contracts, data and trained staff that make the next one faster.

Can a local company propose a PPP to a municipality in Jordan?

Yes. Article 15 of PPP Law No. 19 of 2023 lets a company in Jordan bring its own PPP idea for a public service to government. Local companies that know the city’s streets, markets and buildings can propose projects for its services, prepared at their own cost, and the municipality studies them on their merits.

The Ministry of Investment can charge a study fee, and a qualifying proposal joins the national registry of public investment projects. The tender still tests the idea against the market: the proposer can match the best offer, and the winning bidder pays the proposer’s direct study costs. A published list of the city’s needs points proposals at the services residents care about most, and our page on unsolicited proposals sets out what the route means for each kind of organization.

How do a city lab, AI, robotics and tokenization improve city services in Jordan?

A city lab in Jordan is a PPP research lab that a municipality tenders to run ten small PPP projects a year at up to $100,000 each, such as sensor-led parking, smart street lighting or robotic street cleaning. It publishes every result, including the failures, and the city carries what works across its streets.

The lab can be funded by moving 1% of the budget away from inefficient spending. New tools then make small projects worth doing, because preparation that once cost too much for a car park or a street-lighting contract can be done by a small team.

AI lets a small municipal team draft the feasibility report for a car park, compare bids on whole-life cost and read every contract in plain language. Once a service is running, sensors and AI show which car parks are full, which street lights have failed and when each bin needs collecting.

Robotics brings city services within reach of small partners. Street-cleaning machines, waste-sorting lines, drones that survey local roads and sensors that find leaks in public buildings let a local company deliver a service with a small team, and their records show the municipality what was cleaned, collected or repaired.

Tokenization lets residents invest in the services they use. A car park, a market or a solar roof on a public building can raise its capital from a few hundred local investors and pay them from its own revenue, and a public registry shows everyone what was built, what it cost and how it performs.

How do city services connect to Jordan’s $86 billion of projects?

Jordan has about $86 billion of PPP and infrastructure projects in development, with $46 billion anchored in Aqaba and many others reaching governorates across the country. Most of them will be built in or near a Jordanian city or town and will rely on its streets, permits and services, so a municipal PPP program sits directly beside them.

Governorate guides across the country count municipalities among the organizations that can join the consortiums bidding for local projects, bringing land, operating knowledge and the local workforce that international partners need.

A municipality that proves a model on one street can repeat it across the whole city, and the next municipality can adopt the same contract.

Jordan has the projects, a law that accepts unsolicited proposals and rules that make small PPPs simpler to tender. The first municipalities in the region to run their streets, lights and markets through small PPPs with AI, robotics and tokenized finance will become the models that other cities visit and copy. The Municipalities guidePDF is free to read and download as an 18-page PDF.