Thread: Archive News - Iraqi Dinar Think Tank - 06/10/2010 - 24/01/2011

'Iraq is the new Dubai'

Financial firms who have successfully invested in Dubai should turn their attention to opportunities in Iraq, according to a businessman who has tasted success in both markets.

Shwan Ibrahim Taha, who worked as fund manager in Dubai before becoming chairman of an investment firm in Iraq, said that while security issues remain, investors prepared to pursue business in Iraq will find a business environment comparable to Dubai in the late 1990s.

"The mood shift I have seen in Iraq in the last six months indicates that some serious money is probably being prepared to go into Iraq," Taha told experts at a recent conference devoted to investment opportunities in Iraq.

"The difficulties in putting money into Dubai's market back in the late 1990s and early 2000s are not too different to Iraq [now]," he told delegates at the event in Bahrain.

The political uncertainty which remains in Iraq after March elections failed to produce a new government, and the remaining threat of deadly attacks against foreign firms, has not been enough to deter hedge funds from preparing to enter the country, according to Taha, chairman of the Baghdad-based Rabee Securities.

"There was nothing to dissuade these hedge funds and frontier funds from actually investing in Iraq," he said. "And the reason is they have seen it all."

Their interest has only grown stronger as Iraq's economic isolation saved it from the worst of the global financial crisis.

"The rewards have been unmentioned. We started getting a lot of attention when suddenly everyone noticed the whole global stock market had collapsed and there is one country that has not collapsed - it's Iraq.

So everybody started asking 'why, what happened?'

"[Admittedly] that's a sword with two edges. It means that Iraq is on another planet and is orbiting in its own way and it's not integrated."

But that will not always be the case, Taha believes, and Iraq has the potential to emulate the sudden economic development of neighbours like Dubai.

"We will actually see thriving capital markets in Iraq in the next five to ten years," he added.

http://www.ipairaq.com/index.php?nam...onomy&id=31019