Thread: Iraq/Dinar News. 09/05 to 01/14/07

Originally Posted by MrsCK

Ok let me get ya excited here is a quick recap:
1. Aman isx ticker for the last week says: ISX starts trading NOV 7th.
2. Soldier is told by bank in iraq on Thursday - no sale until RV in a couple of days hmmmm
3. Bank has not updated since Thursday (which tells me the soldier story is correct)
4. 10,000 Hand out Nov. 7th
5. none of the news site's have hardly anything or 11/6 news.
6. Plus forex sites are doing a funny dance the last two days on dinars.

NOV 7th is REALLLLLLY LOOKING GOOD!!!
I think maybe we need to watch NYC forex at 9am EST today and just see if something may give us some clues.

HOPE this gets ya a bit EXCITED -

Kiddo you are doing great on helping everybody here too, we are happy to have you in the family here at rolclub.

RV THIS WEEK

I missed the article on the soldier (#2) please elaborate. Thanks

Originally Posted by Raditz

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Im sorry if i have missed this but my computer crashed last week. Is this confirmed, do we have an article that states that the hand out will be on 7th??

I don't have the article but I think it said early next week so as soon as the elections are through tomorrow and they lift the curfew they should start the hand outs.

Originally Posted by MrsCK

Ok let me get ya excited here is a quick recap:
1. Aman isx ticker for the last week says: ISX starts trading NOV 7th.
2. Soldier is told by bank in iraq on Thursday - no sale until RV in a couple of days hmmmm
3. Bank has not updated since Thursday (which tells me the soldier story is correct)
4. 10,000 Hand out Nov. 7th
5. none of the news site's have hardly anything or 11/6 news.
6. Plus forex sites are doing a funny dance the last two days on dinars.

NOV 7th is REALLLLLLY LOOKING GOOD!!!
I think maybe we need to watch NYC forex at 9am EST today and just see if something may give us some clues.

HOPE this gets ya a bit EXCITED -

Kiddo you are doing great on helping everybody here too, we are happy to have you in the family here at rolclub.

RV THIS WEEK

I agree on everything only ISX it trading already from the 1st of november. Only trading session of the 6th cancelled but trading resumes at the 8th. This is personally confirmed by warka.

Hope on a RV these days!!

Maybe a reval on the 5 p.m. Sydney exchange today and when they pass out the 10K tomorrow all is good. Plus.....if it shows up late today the DEMS can't say it was politically motivated because it happened on 11/7 (election day)...I know this has nothing to do with our U.S. elections but there is always people who spin things. Let's just get it done....and GET THAT ECONOMY FLOURISHING IN IRAQ AGAIN....(do ya' think they heard me over there???)

Originally Posted by Inscrutable

I don't have the article but I think it said early next week so as soon as the elections are through tomorrow and they lift the curfew they should start the hand outs.

You are correct it did say early next week, now as long as the curfew has not pushed this out any, they should start distributing tomorrow!

But remember their tuesday bussiness day is over by the time we start our tuesday!

Originally Posted by Dr. Mike

I missed the article on the soldier (#2) please elaborate. Thanks

was posted by one of the members that their friends son in Iraq when they went to purchase dinar directly from the CBI that they would not be sold to. When asked why they were told the CBI won't sell till after it revals. When asked when will that be they were told in a couple of days. I think this happened late last week.

Hi,

Go to Iraq Updates, News Service, masses of news on there today.

Government committed to adopting free market policy

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05 November 2006 (Arab News)
The economic achievement in Iraq is often ignored, overshadowed by the violence in the country, Iraqi and American officials said. “The economic team has made significant progress,”said US deputy secretary of treasury Robert Kimmit who was in Kuwait for the International Compact for Iraq meeting. “They have stable currency, they have sizable foreign currency reserves, there are almost back up to pre-war level oil production, and they are able to finance a considerable part of their own government operations,” he told reporters at a conference late Tuesday.

There remains a gap on Iraqis resources however with what the country needs, which is why the government is calling for international support in its Iraq compact. The Iraqi government outlined its economic strategy to put forward, that is hoped to primarily diversify the country’s economy and decrease its reliance on oil. “Agricultural horizons are very promising but we are encountering impediments which need huge investments to overcome. We have been facing the problem of water supplies with our neighbours,” said its Minister of Planning and Development Cooperation Ali Baban.
Iraq however stressed that it will not go back to subsidies policy and will continue to keep its economic sectors “open”. But Iraq also will not expedite privatizations of its industries despite the government’s leaning towards an open economy. “We should not rush as some negative results may accompany any unplanned privatization process,” he said. The government is studying plans to privatize state factories, but most of the factories depend on costly government assistance, and recent move of “keeping the import door open” and without regulations and restrictions has put an end to many factories, he said.

While the Iraqi government remained committed to adopting free market policy, Baban said the removal of subsidies and facilities have hurt the agricultural and industrial sectors. To strengthen the industries, the government is asking the private sector firms to merge. “Many of the private factories are still small and cannot do the required task .. . we are trying hard to urge the Iraqi businessmen to merge their companies and establish big ones,” he said.

The government also believes that merging Iraqi small banks into big banks is necessary. It currently has 25 private banks. “Our idea is to have some kind of minimum capital for banks, to at least 20 billion Iraqi dinar. Some of the very small banks that do not have the capacity will have to merge, or otherwise they would have to raise the capital alone,” he said. The country also has six state-owned banks, the biggest of which are Rafidain and al Rasheed Banks.

Iraqi central bank is also trying to get private banks to participate more in the country’s economic activities, and for Iraq to be less dependent on the Trade Bank of Iraq, which is financed by a consortium of foreign lenders such as Citigroup and JP Morgan to provide trade finance services Iraqi banks are unable to offer. “We would like government’s import activities to be more diversified. We want all banks to participate, this is our policy in the future. Trade Bank is doing fine, but we don’t to have to be completely dependent on that,” he said. Al Shabibi said the central bank is currently succeeding in its fight against inflation.

“We are using interest rate and we sell our own bills to skim liquidity. The inflation rate now is at 51 per cent, down from 70 per cent previously. Whether it will continue to go down, we will have to see,” said al Shabibi. The Iraqi government has given out six licenses to foreign banks in 2004, including to National Bank of Kuwait, Arab Banking Corp, HSBC and Standard Chartered. Only Arab Banking Corp operates a full-fledged branch in the country; the others opted to enter Iraq via a local partner.

Labor ministry to distribute monthly funds for idles

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05 November 2006 (Al-Sabaah)
Ministry of labor has referred an application for distributing funds every month instead of three months.

A source at the ministry said that children of chronicle diseases would be included in the coming fund. The source made it clear that the ministry would raise up with about 50 per cent of current salaries, which is about 120 to 150 thousands dinars for the current time.

Sorry if this is a re-post:

The benefits of joining the IMF and the World Bank

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03 November 2006 (Al-Sabaah)
Economists, concerned Iraqis and foreigners disagree on the subject above while some of them believe that Iraqi government has rushed to resort to the IMF and the World Bank to reschedule its debts on the terms of implementing the policy of economic reform; however, only (11.6) billion dollars of the foreign debts have been quenched as a first stage, and this only makes (7.8%) of the foreign debt. It is a small percentage in return for submitting to the conditions of the economic reform policy, which include:

1- raising support for the prices of fuels and other services.
2- Canceling the ration card.
3- Privatization of the public sector and transfer most of its business to the private sector.

However, the application of these procedures in light of the current circumstances of the country and this speed has serious negative repercussions on the Iraqi society who is suffering already. It is unreasonable to convert a centrally planned economy based on the absolute leadership of the public sector for four decades into a liberal economy based on free market economy, overnight. After the events of 942003, Iraq suffered from political and economic shocks that are intolerable for a developing country like Iraq.

According to the latest statistics of the Ministry of Planning and Development Cooperation in Iraq, (60%) of the citizens are below the poverty line. So, if the ration card is abolished and subsidies on fuel prices and services are removed, how many will their percentage be? Moreover, the unemployment rate was between (40% - 50%), when taking these measures, the increase would amount to more than that; this means that poverty line will increase and thus increasing rates of crime and corruption since Iraq is considered one of the young population nations whose population pyramid has a broad base and unemployment are concentrated in the younger ages, that (3) out of (4) Iraqis under the age of 25 are unemployed. The concentration of unemployment in this group of age had very dangerous political and social consequences since unemployment is considered a fertile environment for the growth of crime, extremism and violence which emerged strongly to the surface in Iraq, particularly after the events of 942003 and left serious negative effects on Iraq. There are many examples for such dangerous consequences, like: (the revolution of bread in each of Egypt and Tunisia, and the revolution against raising fuel prices in Yemen, etc.).

Despite all this, we believe that Iraq can achieve benefits when joining the IMF and the World Bank. There will be a genuine development, as the case now in some Gulf countries, Emirates for example, through encouraging investments in vital and important sectors, such as the agricultural, through many inducements like the granting of loans and tax exemption etc... The remaining investments are left free to supply and demand. Since Iraq has natural resources of cheap prices, surely the costs of production will be much less than other countries; therefore, it is possible to manufacture materials then export them. Thus, why do we, now, import cement of bad types when we already have the fine raw materials for manufacturing this material? ِ Another benefit of the accession, is that we will get cheap raw materials to help our industry, and we will also import expertise and technology to create developed industry and agriculture.

But what is happening in Iraq now is that some places are built and others are demolished. Therefore, Iraq is at an important crossroads that requires from everyone, especially economic policy-makers in the country, to review the ideological basis and economic theories which they use to form the policies and the applications should be compatible with the concepts of modernization and reform promoted for, and this is one of the biggest economical challenges that we face today.
Thus, the deteriorating reality between the suffering of the society and with the requirements of the economical policy of the State, raise a question: what do we do to walk out of this crisis without a flaw negatively affecting the economic process of the citizen and the state as well?