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The budget deficit has been accentuated by a soaring energy bill that hit $4.5 billion last year after the disruption of regular Egyptian gas imports that support 80 percent of Jordan's electricity generation.

That forced the kingdom to switch to much more expensive diesel to cover its electricity needs.

Economists said Jordan's ability to maintain a costly subsidy system and a large state bureaucracy, whose salaries consume the bulk of the $9.6 billion of state expenditure, was increasingly untenable in the absence of large foreign capital inflows or infusions of foreign aid.