Transparency & Accountability
Palestinian market concentration is visible at the top, unmeasurable below it
Graphic: Times of Palestine
Original Reporting
Concentration in the Palestinian economy can be measured at the top of the market and almost nowhere else. PADICO Holding states on its own website that the market value of the group and its companies listed on the Palestine Exchange is $1.8 billion, "about 40% of the market value of the stock exchange". A World Economic Forum profile of Paltel Group puts that single company at 31 per cent of the exchange's total capitalisation. Because PADICO's count includes companies within the Paltel group, the two figures cannot be added, and neither is dated in the published versions.
Below the level of listed companies, the same exercise is not possible. Jamal Abu Farha, director general of the Competition General Directorate in Palestine, told an OECD competition event in July 2020 that "Palestine does not have a competition law at the moment", according to an account of the event published by the Kluwer Competition Law Blog, which records that efforts to finalise such a law have run since 2003 and that no independent competition enforcement body has been established. A study in the University of Baghdad's Journal of Legal Sciences reached the same conclusion: the scattered provisions in existing Palestinian legislation do not amount to a competition regime, and an enforcement body would require a dedicated law.
Without that law there is no authority collecting market-share or margin data on importers, so the margins earned in cement, fuel and food importing are not in the public record at all.
What is on the record is the profitability of the listed telecoms sector. Paltel posted net income of 41.79 million Jordanian dinars in 2024 on revenue of 241.13 million dinars, according to disclosures compiled by the brokerage Sahem Trading and Investment and by the data service StockAnalysis, which records revenue down 14 per cent and earnings down 3.6 per cent year on year. Investing.com puts the company's trailing twelve-month net profit margin at 17.33 per cent and its market capitalisation at just over 700 million dinars. An equity research note by AlphaMena, hosted on Paltel's own corporate website, worked from an expected EBITDA margin averaging 42.3 per cent and an EBIT margin of 24.3 per cent.
The company attributes the recent decline to the war. In its first-quarter 2024 disclosure, reported by the financial service BNews, Paltel said revenue fell 23 per cent to 57.5 million dinars and net profit fell to 6.2 million dinars from 11.3 million, mainly because of the assault on Gaza, service disruptions and hundreds of millions of minutes, messages and internet volumes provided free of charge.
The pricing structure that produced those margins has been the subject of a World Bank assessment circulated through the United Nations documents system, which found that Paltel's monopoly position at the retail level was a key determinant of prices paid by Palestinian consumers, cited an 80 per cent market share figure supplied by Jawwal itself, and contrasted a retail price of around 20 US cents a minute with an assumed cost of about 4 cents. That assessment describes the market before a second operator existed; the AlphaMena note records that Paltel dominated the market for more than a decade until Wataniya Mobile launched in the West Bank at the end of 2009, and that both operators face what it calls illegal competition from Israeli mobile operators using coverage in settlements.
The terms on which the sector is regulated remain unpublished. The Coalition for Accountability and Integrity, AMAN, reported at its annual conference on telecoms governance that both Paltel Group and Ooredoo should publish the concession agreement, particularly its financial section; that the State Audit and Administrative Control Bureau should activate oversight of public shareholding companies operating a public utility; and that both boards should adopt a detailed, published conflict-of-interest policy and disclose board members' expenses, the facilities granted to them, and shares held personally by board members, their spouses and minor children. Neither concession agreement has been published.
AMAN has identified the ownership gap directly. In recommendations submitted to the prime minister on the quota and commodity-list system, reported by the news agency PNN, the coalition called for the amendment of Article 14 of Decree-Law No. 42 of 2021 on companies to require disclosure of beneficial owners rather than only signatories, managers and board members, citing growing suspicion that several companies registered under different names are owned by one person, which it said reinforces monopoly and price manipulation. It also asked for price ceilings, an annual import plan, and quota access for small and medium enterprises to prevent quota shares being monopolised by a limited number of traders.
At an AMAN hearing on the same system, the Anti-Corruption Commission was recorded as reporting that the Joint Economic Committee had stalled, freezing permitted import quantities despite a doubling of the population, and that imported goods lacked customs coding.
Cement follows a documented exclusivity pattern. Research published by the Institute for Palestine Studies found that the Israeli producer Nesher granted the Palestinian Company for Cement and Building Materials an exclusivity contract, that the company has effectively monopolised imports from that source since 1995, and that small family importers were gradually reduced to distributors.
The Palestine Investment Fund sits at the intersection of state and market. The International Forum of Sovereign Wealth Funds records that the fund was created through a one-time transfer of commercial assets held by the Palestinian Authority, is registered at the Ministry of National Economy, and distributes dividends to the Palestinian treasury when the government requests it. The most recent asset total in the retrieved record is from the US Government Accountability Office, which reported in 2013 that the fund managed about $780 million as of 2012.
Its chairmanship and the government have overlapped. The European Council on Foreign Relations records that Mohammad Mustafa chaired the fund from 2009, was founding chief executive of Paltel and founded Wataniya Mobile, and was appointed prime minister in March 2024; the Prime Minister's Office states that he also heads the PLO Executive Committee's economic department. AMAN's eighteenth annual integrity report, summarised by Raya, found continued weak compliance with conflict-of-interest disclosure and urged separating public office from commercial activity, and reported that oversight and judicial bodies remain institutionally subordinate to the executive in the absence of the Legislative Council.
Whether the competition law drafted since 2003 and the beneficial-ownership amendment AMAN has requested advance now depends on the same executive that appoints the bodies meant to audit them, and no legislature sits to review either.
