The Investment Performance of Jordanian Government's Agencies: A Comparative Study for Jordanian Institutional Investors

Abstract

Repeated claims are made in the press of inferior investment performance by government's agencies. This study aimed at shedding light on the accounting and market performance of stock investments made by Jordanian government's agencies. It also intends to compare different performance indicators among Jordanians institutional investors from both the public and private sectors. Specifically, the study evaluates investments' operating success, profitability, liquidity, indebtedness, and other market performance indicators. The study covered all large institutional stock investments reported in the Jordanian Shareholding Companies Guide fro 1996. This included the following government agencies' investment: 13 investments by Jordanian Social Security Corporation and 19 investments by Jordanian Investments: 43 investments by Jordanian national banks and 47 investments by Jordanian corporations. The study used the Two-Way ANOVA approach to analyse the data. The results show the superiority of Jordanian Investments Corporation stock investment's performance in the fields of operating (total assets and accounts receivables turnovers), profitability and market performance indicators relevant to the private institutional investments. The Jordanian Social Security Corporation stock investment's performance has occupied middle grounds between the best performance by Jordanian Investment Corporation and the relatively weak performance by Jordanian private institutional investors.