The city of Karbala in central Iraq has stretched its 90bn-dinar budget ($75m) to hundreds of investment projects and has now been granted another 12bn dinars ($10m) by Iraq’s Finance Ministry.

As our blogger Stewart Blair wrote this month: “UAE property developers/investors have been active in the south where mixed use developments in Karbala are springing up to meet the demand for housing and hotel/serviced apartment accommodation in a city where the annual number of visitors during the holy season of Ashoura reached 18 million recently.”

Housing projects go way beyond Karbala’s investment budge, with at least $50bn of developments already agreed. Yet not all investment projects are of such mind-blowing proportions, meaning opportunities for smaller companies. This month a $450m contract to build 10 power turbines in Karbala was granted, for example. 11 projects worth $18m were approved in September for such things as new schools, sewage pumping stations, municipal buildings, and new roads, and water networks.

(Sources: Aswat al-Iraq, Iraq Business News)