Thread: Archive News - Iraqi Dinar Think Tank - 01/10/09 - 27/03/10

The Ministry of Planning conference postponed the announcement of the Five-Year Plan

The Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation on the postponement of the announcement of the five-year plan due to be held next Monday.

A statement of the ministry received by the independent press (Iba) on Saturday, a copy of "The conference has been postponed until further notice". It did not say what caused the delay or determine a new date for the conference.

The Ministry of Planning has announced earlier that it was preparing for the conference to reveal details of five-year plan which includes hundreds of projects.

http://www.ipairaq.com/index.php?nam...onomy&id=21225

Minister of Oil: oil region .. Iraqi oil must be handed over to the central government

Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani said the dispute between the center and the region of the oil contracts there is old and not new because we have Mahzat serious about those contracts.

Shahristani said in a statement singled out by the Agency for News ((et al)): This story is old and have been talking about it again and the way in which the signed contracts in the Kurdistan region and type of contracts awarded and the quotas allocated to foreign companies and the long interview with the Ministry of Oil Notes seriousness."

He added: "We are responsible for protecting the wealth of Iraq, whatever, does not convince us that the wealth of Iraq were protected properly accept it and we will have a position."

"But there is now a proposal to export this oil, irrespective of those contracts and the receipt by the central government and export through Iraqi network, and the filing of its revenue in state coffers and this is required and the Oil Ministry emphasizes that during all of the past, regardless of any dispute, the oil is Iraqi oil should be handed over to the central government and shall be issued and revenue can not be disposed of in any other way and this what he will be ****uted."

http://www.khabaar.com/news.php?action=view&id=7708

Financial declares significant progress in the draft comprehensive system for all government banks

Ministry of Finance announced significant progress on the road to the completion of the comprehensive system for all state banks.

Pointing out that the project will allow the citizen an opportunity to withdraw the amount you want from any branch of Bank of Iraq deployed throughout Iraq.

The Advisor to Finance Minister Zia Alckheon "The draft comprehensive system which is implemented by the World Maysz consists of four stages have been completed first and second phases, with the initiation of Phase III."

Adding that "the company completed 60% of the project, which will hopefully be completed by the end of the year 2010."

The Finance Minister Baqir Jabr Zubaidi declared that "the ministry received the 1500 ATM is dedicated to smart card free of charge from the company's global smart card project carried out in Iraq."

http://www.radiodijla.com/cgi-bin/ne...-13%2007:27:16

Conference with 25 British firms to encourage investment

The chief of the Basra Investment Commission announced that the province is hosting on Saturday a conference attended by representatives of British companies working in different fields as a means to encourage investment there.

“The event aims basically to bring together a grouping of British and Iraqi businessmen under the sponsorship of Baroness Emma Nicholson of Winterbourne so as to stimulate investment ventures in the province,” Hayder Ali Fadel told Aswat al-Iraq news agency.

He said the vent will deal with investment opportunities in the city and direct meetings between Iraqi and British investors and businessmen to come up with business propositions.

The one-day conference is being held at the Manawi Pasha Hotel in central Basra.

http://en.aswataliraq.info/?p=126904

New Korean Manufacture in Basra

Basra Province Council said that a first draft agreement was signed with a South Korean company in order to establish an Iron and stainless Steel Industry with a cost of $70 million and a productive capacity that reached 6 million tons per year. Meanwhile, the Province’s Economic Development Committee said that the Industry will create about 8000 job opportunity.

http://www.alsumaria.tv/en/Economics...-in-Basra.html

Iraqi election candidates on Facebook

Some political entities running for elections opened Facebook pages to boost their electoral campaigns online. Independent High Electoral Commission said it is monitoring these sites to control electoral campaigns.

http://www.alsumaria.tv/en/Iraq-News...-Facebook.html

Iraq election officials confirm Sunni candidate ban

Iraqi officials confirmed on Saturday that appeals by prominent Sunni politicians against a move to ban them from next month's election had failed, opening the door to sectarian recriminations that could mar the vote.

Many Iraqi Sunnis are alarmed by a campaign by the Shi'ite-led government against people accused of links to former Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein's Baath party, and a decision by a panel to ban almost 500 candidates because of Baathist links.

The controversy has threatened to reopen old wounds just when the sectarian slaughter triggered by the 2003 U.S. invasion has begun to fade and Iraq has started to attract multibillion-dollar investments from global oil firms.

Usama al-Ani, deputy head of the independent electoral commission, or IHEC, said the agency had received a formal notification from an appeals panel that only 26 appeals by banned candidates had been successful.

One hundred and forty-five appeals were rejected, he said. Other candidates had been voluntarily replaced by their parties.

"Among those whose appeals were rejected were Saleh al-Mutlaq and Dhafer al-Ani," said Ani, referring to two Sunni politicians who are among the most prominent Sunnis in Iraq.

The furor over the banned candidates has come to dominate the campaign for the March 7 parliamentary election, which kicked off officially on Friday.

The election will determine who runs Iraq as U.S. troops prepare to withdraw by the end of 2011 and massive oil sector projects kick into gear. If broadly accepted, the vote could help to heal the rift between Sunni and Shi'ite; if it is viewed as unfair by Sunnis, it could lead to more bloodshed and strife.

The panel that drew up the list of banned candidates is dominated by Shi'ite politicians and its actions were viewed by some Sunnis as an attempt to disenfranchise them.

The list actually includes more Shi'ites than Sunnis, and disproportionately targets cross-confessional, secular alliances that are expected to fare well against the religious Shi'ite Islamist parties that have dominated Iraq since the invasion.

BAATH PARANOIA

Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and other Shi'ite leaders have jumped on the issue to stir up widespread fears among Shi'ite voters over a possible return to power of the Baath party, which brutally repressed Shi'ites and minority Kurds under Saddam.

The tactic could distract from complaints about corruption, poor services and bomb attacks, and deter Shi'ite voters from backing secular contenders, like the Iraqiya list of former prime minister Iyad Allawi that both Mutlaq and Ani belong to.

"It is not a judicial decree, it is a political one for clear political effect, and it has a clear Iranian flavor," Ani told Reuters, echoing perceptions that the Shi'ite politicians who drew up the list of banned candidates are close to Tehran.

The Iraqiya coalition announced it would temporarily suspend its election campaign to protest the ban, as well as the murder of one its candidates in the tense city of Mosul a few days ago.

Mutlaq, who had been openly and controversially courting the votes of Iraqis nostalgic for the greater stability and security of Saddam's rule, warned of disaster.

"If the current political process continues along this path it will fail and finish soon," Mutlaq told Reuters at a protest called on Saturday by his supporters.

In an interview with Reuters on Friday, Mutlaq said that "enemies of Iraq" had won a battle against him but not the war.

"I believe that democracy in Iraq is committing suicide," he said.

http://www.pukmedia.com/english/inde...raq&Itemid=386

Anti-Baath campaign a spur to Iraq Shiite voters

Reporting from Najaf, Iraq - Currency trader Ahmad Sharbar, like many of the merchants in the teeming bazaar of this ancient Shiite city, had become disillusioned with Iraq's new democracy.

He was upset with the failure of the government he voted for in 2005 to improve services or create jobs and with the endless political bickering in Baghdad that has paralyzed progress on many fronts.

He had even decided not to vote in Iraq's national elections March 7 until he heard that hundreds of candidates were to be barred from the poll because of their alleged ties to the former Baath Party of Saddam Hussein.

"This news about the Baathists trying to come back to power made me very insistent to participate," said Sharbar, 39, who fled the country under threat of death from the Baathist regime in the 1990s. "We all say the Baath Party is a malignant disease, and we all fear it will spread again."

In Najaf, the religious capital of Shiite Islam, and elsewhere across the overwhelmingly Shiite Muslim south, which suffered greatly under the former regime's brutality, the government decision to bar as many as 500 candidates has proved wildly popular, mushrooming into an anti-Baathist crusade that promises to dominate and define the election campaign, which officially began Friday.

Leaders of the two main Shiite blocs competing for the votes of the Shiite majority -- Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's State of Law slate and the Iraqi National Alliance coalition of mostly religious parties -- have been vying to outdo each other with promises to clamp down on the allegedly resurgent Baath Party.

Election posters denouncing Baathists have appeared across Baghdad and the south. One features a prominent Sunni Arab lawmaker who was included on the list, with a big red cross over his face and the words "No to return of the Baathist criminals" written underneath.

There have been anti-Baathist demonstrations throughout Shiite areas, and a string of southern provinces, led by Najaf, has issued proclamations calling for the expulsion of all Baathists.A series of deadly bombings in Baghdad and elsewhere, including attacks Friday that killed three people on the outskirts of Najaf, has been blamed by the government on Baathists, adding weight to the perception among Iraq's Shiites that the Baath Party represents an immediate threat.

U.S. officials say they believe former Baathists play a minor role in supporting the Islamists of the Al Qaeda in Iraq militant group.

The Shiites' mood flies in the face of five years of U.S. policy aimed at promoting reconciliation between Sunnis and Shiites and bodes ill for the prospects of future harmony now that American troops are preparing to head home.

U.S. and other Western diplomats in Baghdad have condemned the ban on the candidates, some of them members of the current parliament, fearing it will undermine the legitimacy of the elections.

When Shiite leaders talk about de-Baathification, as the process of removing Baathists is known, Sunnis feel targeted because the policy is applied unevenly, said Ahmed Alwan, a Sunni lawmaker.

But in Najaf, where just about everyone has a relative who was e.xecuted under Hussein and many experienced firsthand the tyranny of his rule, memories of the former regime's brutality are still raw, eclipsing the more mundane issues of services, the economy and corruption that might otherwise have dominated the elections.

Just steps from the city's gold-domed Imam Ali shrine, Shiite Islam's holiest site, Said Hussam Shuba, 29, sells skimpy satin negligees in pink, red and white from a tiny stall. He's no fan of the Shiite clerics empowered by Iraq's new democracy, some of whom regularly try to force him to close his shop, but he views the Baathists as a far bigger threat.

"No one has suffered more at the hands of their own government than the Iraqi people did under Saddam," said Shuba, whose uncle was e.xecuted by the Baathist regime in the 1980s. "We must never allow them to return, and so I realize I must definitely vote."

Haidar Nizar, an independent political analyst in Najaf, believes the Shiite parties have deliberately overstated the Baathist threat to halt a swing away from sectarian politics that became apparent during last year's provincial elections.

Shiite officials deny that was their goal, though they acknowledge the effect.

"It didn't happen because of votes, but this will probably energize the people," said Entifadh Qanbar, a spokesman for Ahmad Chalabi, who chairs the Accountability and Justice Commission, which ordered the ban on candidates. Both Qanbar and Chalabi are candidates representing the Iraqi National Alliance.

"It's made the Baathist danger an imminent national issue," Qanbar said, "and that will motivate people to vote."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-a...0,478401.story

The Oil Ministry is preparing to announce the decision to export oil from the Kurdistan region after reaching a final agreement

Announced that the Iraqi Oil Ministry, said Saturday that the decision to announce the resumption of export of petroleum from oil fields in Kurdistan region of Iraq through the tube depends on the national possibility of reaching a final agreement between the parties, is regarded as the Chairman of the Commission on oil and gas parliamentary Ali Hussain Balou said comments by Oil Minister on the possibility of resolving differences within the election campaign.

A spokesman for the Iraqi Oil Ministry, Asim Jihad said in an interview for "Alsumaria News", "The approval for export of oil from oil fields in the region depends on the possibility of reaching a comprehensive agreement on major outstanding differences between the parties, the most important benefits the oil companies operating in the region.

The company "De. That. Or" the first Norwegian companies that have signed an oil exploration deal with the Kurdish authorities in 2004, despite the objection of the central government, while the government gave the region beginning in November 2007 the South Korean Alliance for oil exploration rights in the region of Dohuk , northern Iraq.

The Jihad that "the agreement, which was held last year with the Territory provides for the export production of oil fields and to deal with this centrally through the channels allocated by the Ministry of Oil in Baghdad, as well as assign the revenues to the central treasury," referring to the "agreement was stopped because of the demands Government of the Territory Federal Government payment of dues to oil companies operating in it."

The Kurdistan Regional Government first announced in June 2009 on the export of thousand barrels per day from the fields of Taq Taq and Tawke, having been linked to these fields of strategic pipeline in Kirkuk and up to the Turkish port of Ceyhan, which is located on the Mediterranean.

The Jihad that "the oil ministry continues to refuse payment of oil companies operating in the region, because they were not a party through the conclusion of these contracts, as they had not seen it, or how its conclusion, or the site, or the privileges granted to these companies."

The spokesman of the Ministry of Oil that "the central government and the Oil Ministry is currently studying the recent initiative by the Government of the Territory on the solution to this problem," expecting that "the formation of a technical and legal committees to study the issue carefully."

Jihad and stressed that "The oil ministry is responsible for the conclusion of agreements with foreign companies can not be controlled any territory or province of the oil extracted to be the king of the Iraqi people in general."

The head of the Government of Kurdistan, Barham Ahmad Saleh held talks with Iraqi officials during his visit to Baghdad last December, addressed a number of outstanding issues between Baghdad and Erbil, including oil contracts signed by the Kurdistan government with international oil companies.

On his part, Chairman of the Commission on oil and gas in the Iraqi parliament Ali Hussain Balou said "The federal government and the oil ministry had not taken up today for any practical and positive steps towards the initiative announced by the Government of the Territory."

He said in an interview with Blue "Sumerian News" that "the Federal Government and the Ministry of Oil are still reject the oil contracts concluded by the Government of the Territory with the oil companies," adding that "the comments by Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani, the last on the solution of these problems fall within the electoral propaganda."

The al-Shahristani announced last Wednesday that Iraq expects to announce the resumption of oil exports from the region of Kurdistan in the north of the country during the coming days.

The Blue that "the provisions of the initiative include the readiness of the Government of the Territory to publish all the outline of the contracts with oil companies operating in the Territory, provided that the Ministry of Oil to pay dues to these companies," surprising "how the companies will accept the production and export of oil from the extract without getting dues."

The al-Shahristani said earlier that the contracts signed by Kurdish authorities with foreign companies, such as "De. That. Or" non-legal, and that these companies will not get paid for leaving the oil ministry to the pipeline is controlled by Baghdad.

http://www.alsumarianews.com/ar/3/30...4;ي.html

Indicator of the contribution of the banking sector in GDP is still below the ambitious

In an interview with the director of banking and credit control in the Central Bank of Iraq and Idi Walid Abdel Nabi revealed the existence of opportunities for joint cooperation to establish new banks or branches of foreign banks or shares in the capital of banks to strengthen the capacity of existing projects and encourage investors to direct the construction and physical reconstruction.

Abdul Nabi also said: that the banking system is a promising and governed by international banking standards, including disclosure, transparency and under the supervision and management of the Central Bank and the few coming years will see significant developments at the level of the organization Alalumblyat banking.

Director General of the banking and credit pointed out that there is an urgent need for the expansion of banks based on the standard population, amounting to ten thousand people each bank, referring to the possibility of establishing foreign banks owned by foreigners is fully treated and Iraqi banks in terms of rights and obligations and the rising toll of private banks, including Islamic and foreign multi - branches of government banks to the numbers that came to it comes against the backdrop of economic philosophy and the new political order to improve the investment climate after the issuance of Law No. 13 of 2006 and amendments to its owner.

Financial market at the beginning
He pointed out that State-owned banks still dominate the banking sector in terms of capital and deposits, which constitute about 6% of gross domestic product, which means that the financial market is still desired at the beginning of a simple financial sector in building a strong and firm.

He highlighted the profits of State-owned banks in 2009 which amounted to 774 billion dinars, while the profits of private banks $ 250 billion and expressed his hope in the establishment of companies for bailouts banking and financial sector liberalization, especially interest rates and eliminate all forms of braking the financial plans of credit, which was imposed by the central bank as well to open to the participation of foreign banks and the shift of the Banking Superintendency to automatic controls, a free external financing and the abolition of all restrictions on the financing of the money Basttinama required anti-money laundering law No. 93 of 2004, as no system other measures related to the introduction of new technologies and get rid of the problems of sagging, administrative and private debt For the government sector.

Money Laundering
In connection with money laundering, said Abdul Nabi, the central bank introduced a special department to follow up on this phenomenon and have close coordination with other government departments to monitor and control processes that may get used to the background or get foreign currency, either way the auction and the opening credits or foreign exchange bank has put his hand on the operations of this type, but not so great that they affect the Iraqi economy, or rise to the high levels of vandalism, has been directed private banks to observe the instructions on this subject and there is constant monitoring of this phenomenon and sustained follow-up have to cut the road to use the money for purposes outside its goals if the operations are funded terrorist or similar.

Contribution to gross domestic Product
Despite the expansion in the work of banks, which play an important role in the revitalization of the economic sectors of The index of the contribution of the banking sector and gross domestic product without ambition did not exceed 7%, while there are countries that do not have the force of the Iraqi economy achieved a domestic product, sometimes up to more than 50%, such as Egypt , Lebanon, Jordan, we reflect that this percentage will increase the performance of banks will rise and expand their contributions and the transition from the role of financial intermediation to the developmental role of the so keen to open new horizons in front, especially in the area of credit, investment and loans, small and soft as well as work toward lifting the roofs of the capital to become a 150 billion dinars instead be identified in fear of the entry of foreign banks because the central bank set its capital, including up to 250 billion dinars, the bank also adopted a system of rules governing the Basel Convention banking, and strengthen the capital and the calculation of market risk as required to determine the ratio of investment not exceeding 20% as that the banks and financial institutions are not outlets for the driver but is channeled to finance the construction projects and provide support and funding.

Capital increase
The most important economic trends that will enhance the work of the specialized banks are financial support and to increase their capital to play a developmental role, as we asked the financial allocations of the budget for each of the bank's industrial, agricultural and real estate loan will be outlets for these banks to establish financing and other housing projects in the productive sectors and other benefits does not exceed 2% and required the instructions to increase the volume of credit which was also a study submitted to the concerned authorities revealed that the role of banks is still below the ambition and the need to bank staffs.

http://www.alsabaah.com/paper.php?so...page&sid=97926