Starting a new thread to see if this fixes posting time problem.
Also sending report to Admins.
Thank you.
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Starting a new thread to see if this fixes posting time problem.
Also sending report to Admins.
Thank you.
We had two threads started for the news so I merged them. Carry on...
would like to hear some good News today or tomorrow. I feel an RV fever comming on.
heck this is the first thing ive been able to read hooray!!now on to the r/v!!
All the news coming from Iraq is good right now!
HCL is on the table to be passed soon, the security issue is improving.
Maliki has grown a "pair" and cleaning house.
It's all good!
We'll have one more reason to celebrate this St. Patty's day!
Industry being revitalised in Iraq: US official by Bryan Pearson
Sun Mar 4, 5:35 PM ET
BAGHDAD (AFP) - Industry is being revitalised in Iraq, despite the raging violence, and creating lucrative openings for entrepreneurs brave enough to do business here, a top US official insists.
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Paul Brinkley, the Pentagon's deputy under secretary for business, has been touring Iraq for the past week with some 45 US business executives.
He told AFP in Baghdad that many dormant state-owned factories would start firing up again "within months."
Already a plant producing vehicles has reopened in Iskandiriyah, about 40 kilometres (25 miles) south of Baghdad, providing valuable job opportunities for locals. "Others will soon follow," he promised.
Brinkley told journalists, who donned helmets and bullet-proof vests to make the trip out of Baghdad to the US military's Camp Victory on Saturday, that economic growth could help quell the city's chronic sectarian violence.
"There is a recognition that security and economic prosperity go hand in hand, and that unemployment in Iraq is contributing to the frustrations of people and creating sympathy for insurgents," Brinkley said.
Since a US-led coalition invaded Iraq in 2003 to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein, most factories have been lying idle or operating at very low rates of production, he said.
Many of these possess modern equipment, while others have machinery at least as good as many enterprises operating efficiently in India and China.
"They can quickly be revitalised," Brinkley said. "The factories served as the engine for the Iraqi economy and must be restarted."
The US government, he added, is working with the ministries of finance and industry as well as with Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh "to get this economic engine running again so that thousands ... can regain employment."
Enterprises that could be restarted fairly easily, he said, included upstream and downstream oil activities, textiles, heavy machinery, chemicals, minerals and electronics, among others.
At the same time, he added, his department is involved in efforts to connect international entrepreneurs with Iraqi business leaders so private concerns and factories can also be jolted back to life.
He and his group had travelled around Baghdad and the provinces or districts of Anbar, Iskandiriyah, Arbil and Diyala, meeting business leaders, farmers and others from across the social and economic spectrum.
Those travelling with Brinkley said they had been surprised at the potential that exists in the embattled country but also at just how far Iraq's dormant industrial capacity has decayed or fallen into disuse.
"The industry ministry controls 200 factory sites, but these factories are running on average at only 10 percent of capacity," said Fred Cook, a US government specialist in labour affairs.
"The ministry has 196,000 workers on its payroll but only a small fraction of these are actively employed in factories. Most are under-employed and paid only a small fraction of what they were previously paid," he explained.
"Our goal is to restart industry and to put people back to work."
Mahdi Sajjad, of British-based Gulfsands Petroleum, said the potential for upstream and downstream activities linked to Iraq's lucrative oil industry -- the country's dominant foreign exchange earner -- is enormous.
His company has already made an offer to deal with Iraq's flared gas -- the burn-off which most other oil producers in the developed world have long been converting to dry and liquid gas.
"We have proposed that we do the processing for free. We will deliver the dry gas to the Iraqi government and then sell the liquefied gas on the open market," Sajjad said. "We are just waiting for the go-ahead."
Julian Burns, vice president of BAE Systems North America, which makes trucks as well as defence and aerospace systems, said he had found in the Iraqis a "resourceful and proud people who are ready to do business."
He was not concerned, he said, about talk of Iraq sliding relentlessly towards civil war.
"I'm a retired army general and I'm here to do business in Iraq," he told AFP. "That in itself is a message."
US official Brinkley, too, shrugged off talk of civil war.
"It's been good to have come here and to have spoken to the people. All say they just want to live in peace.
"In any case, many multinationals do business in other dangerous places in the world. There is no reason they should not do so in Iraq as well."
Why put off until tomorrow what you can do today.................Quote:
Originally Posted by bob1940
Money matters a sign of hazardous times in Iraq
In Baghdad, business is done almost exclusively in cash and with a careful eye on security.
Click-2-Listen
By Larry Kaplow
INTERNATIONAL STAFF
Sunday, March 04, 2007
BAGHDAD, Iraq — In Iraq these days, it sometimes seems as if you have to chase people down to give them your money.
As a Baghdad-based correspondent for the past four years, I have used a satellite television service that requires annual renewal. Paying the bill is difficult. The office of the satellite service moves frequently, and now, with a kidnapping threat hanging over him, the manager is running the business from Amman, Jordan.
He doesn't take checks or credit cards. So I either had to find a way to wire him money or get money to a Jordanian who would drop off the cash, which is what I did.
Financial transactions are a way of sizing up the state of a country, its adherence to things such as laws and contracts, and the overall security and value of the economy. Like the satellite company owner, hundreds of thousands of businesspeople and professionals have fled, draining Iraq of its expertise and its secular middle class.
For those remaining, business is done almost exclusively in cash, with a careful eye on security.
Typically, if someone buys a house or a car in Baghdad, it's a cash transaction. The buyer gathers his dinars in thick blocks and takes trusted friends or family members along to help protect him and to count out the cash with the seller's friends and relatives.
While big-business owners have checking accounts or bank guarantees, the banks are too antiquated and distrusted to be of much use to most Iraqis. A couple of banks recently started issuing debit cards. But few people have them, and few businesses accept them.
For most Iraqis and many foreigners, common transactions involve risk. Paying in cash means paying in person, a potentially dangerous task.
For example, paying my mobile phone bill has become tougher. The company is based in Baghdad's Mansour area, which has grown increasingly violent in the past year. Lately, I've thought it was too dangerous to visit or send my translator with the money. We still have a little credit built up. After that runs dry, we'll have to figure out some way to get the cash there.
If you're an Iraqi who owns a home, there are property taxes to be paid, also in cash. Iraqi government employees are paid in cash. Retirees collect pensions in cash from banks.
American military officials lament that the weak banking system requires that Iraqi troops get paid in cash, requiring them to get leaves once a month and take their money home, often a dangerous trip.
Only a few Iraqi banks are capable of accepting electronic transfers from out of the country. That complicates things for people like me. I receive money through a transfer from my American company, Cox Newspapers, to a Jordanian bank. From Jordan to Baghdad, the transfer is completed by a Jordanian contact who transfers the funds based on "hawaleh," an honor system of accounting that has been moving money around the Middle East for decades.
In the police state days of Saddam Hussein, money was sometimes stolen from the government-run Rasheed Hotel, but you could walk the streets with a wad of cash and never worry about crime. Now, it's the opposite. Recently in Baghdad, heavily armed gangs have robbed armored cars transporting bags of cash between local banks and the central bank.
Though the money trucks are usually part of a police convoy, the robbers can usually outgun them with their own convoys of masked men. Many Iraqis suspect that they must have some link with the security forces to be able to act so brazenly.
When foreign banks were issued licenses several years ago to do business in Iraq, U.S. officials hailed it as a sign of progress. But the omnipresent dangers have dissuaded foreign banks from opening, and security problems have forced many Iraqi banks to close.
There is a sectarian element to the bank closings. Many people think that Shiite militias try to close down banks in Sunni areas so the Sunnis will have to leave their neighborhoods to pick up monthly pensions or make other transactions. That forces them into Shiite neighborhoods, where they are vulnerable to attack.
An American general said recently how pleased he was that after months of security and logistical work, the Army was able to help reopen a bank in a particularly bad part of the city. I asked to embed with the unit responsible, but in the weeks before the embed came through, the bank closed again.
Complicating matters, Iraq's inflation rate last year was nearly 50 percent. Iraqis found the price increases frightening and infuriating.
While dollars are accepted in Baghdad, Iraqi dinars are preferred, especially for small transactions. And lately, the dinar has rallied.
U.S. and International Monetary Fund officials worried that the value of the dinar would collapse and pressed the Iraqi Central Bank to bolster the currency and cheapen the dollar locally.
A few months ago, a dollar was worth about 1,450 dinars; now, it is worth about 1,300 dinars. It's probably smart policy, but it makes things tougher on my employees, who get paid in dollars.
Finally, while Iraqis in Baghdad want to be paid in cash, they don't want to be paid in just any cash. They want the bills to be crisp and new. Any that are worn or torn will be rejected.
[email protected]. Larry Kaplow has been Cox Newspapers' Baghdad-based correspondent since early 2003
:party::party: I'll go along with that green beer and a cool RVQuote:
Originally Posted by Hardwood
Iraq needs an 'economic surge' Iraq needs an 'economic surge'
04 March 2007 (Khaleej Times)
WE ARE now fighting a war intelligently in Iraq. The only problem is, it’s the last war, not the present one. The United States has gambled all its efforts on a troop surge that tackles the conflict that defined Iraq from 2003 to 2005 — the insurgency — rather than the civil war now raging across the country.
Worse, in trying to solve yesterday’s problem we are exacerbating today’s. In Baghdad, Shia militias have melted away. Almost all US military operations are now directed against Sunni insurgents. If those are successful, the picture could look less violent in six months, but it will be a dangerous stasis. A senior US military officer, who is not allowed to speak on the record on these matters, said to me, "If we continue down the path we’re on, the Sunnis in Iraq will throw their lot behind Al Qaeda, and the Sunni majority in the Arab world will believe that we helped in the killing and cleansing of their brethren in Iraq. That’s not a good outcome for the security of the American people."
We don’t intend to side with anyone. We’re trying to be evenhanded and build a single, democratic nation. But this attempt at neutrality is collapsing in Iraq’s bloody sectarian reality. Last week’s uproar over allegations that Shia policemen in Baghdad had raped a 20-year-old Sunni woman vividly illustrates how trust between the two communities has been shattered. Shia Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki first ordered an investigation, then 12 hours later declared the woman a liar, freed and rewarded the alleged rapists and later fired a Sunni official who had called for an unbiased investigation. Meanwhile we’re stuck in the middle, promising to uncover the truth while both sides are convinced that we’ve betrayed them. This is the definition of a no-win strategy.
The United States needs to find fresh approaches that won’t feed the sectarian dynamic and will address the needs of ordinary Iraqis, not the political elites who are jockeying for power. Most important, we need to find a strategy whose costs are sustainable. Militarily this means drawing down our forces to around 60,000 troops and concentrating on Al Qaeda in Anbar province. The surge we should be pushing instead is a political one, and even more critically, an economic one.
An economic surge is long overdue. One of the less-remarked-upon blunders of the Coalition Provisional Authority was that — consumed by free-market ideology — it shut down all of Iraq’s state-owned enterprises. This crippled the bulk of Iraq’s non-oil economy, threw hundreds of thousands of workers into the streets and further alienated the Sunnis, who were the managerial class of the country. The economic effects of this decision have been seismic. For example, Iraq’s agricultural productivity has plummeted because fertiliser plants were summarily closed. Unemployment in non-Kurdish Iraq remains close to 50 per cent, which helps explain why so many young men are joining gangs, militias and insurgent groups. For the moment at least, democracy in Iraq has sharpened the country’s divisions. Capitalism and commerce can make them less relevant. That is the lesson of many conflict-ridden countries from Northern Ireland to Mozambique to Vietnam.
Iraq needs an 'economic surge' | Iraq Updates