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18 May 2012
Wheat prices surged on Wednesday after Iraq said it bought 400,000 metric tons from the U.S., Australia, Russia, Romania and Kazakhstan. The contracts are for delivery in July and August, a spokesman for the grain board told Bloomberg. (Sources: Bloomberg, Reuters)
Posted in Agriculture0 Comments
17 May 2012
Levels of violence fell slightly in Iraq last week. At least 27 people were killed and 73 injured in nationwide incidents. A total of 19 non-suicide bomb attacks left 16 people dead and 55 injured. This constitutes a lower than normal figure for the country, although the decline is likely to be temporary. Two further [...]
Posted in Weekly Security Update0 Comments
17 May 2012
It might not seem so important in a country faced with such major post-conflict challenges, but getting the basics of communication right should be a necessary function of any government department or state agency. A key element of communication has to be the website, but it is remarkable how many Iraqi government websites are out [...]
Posted in Blog, Communications, Security0 Comments
17 May 2012
Sami al-Araji, chairman of Iraq’s National Investment Commission (NIC), has told Bloomberg that Iraq will soon sign a $7 billion agreement with South Korea’s Hanwha Engineering & Construction Corporation [Hanwah] to build 100,000 housing units in the country. The commission is also due to sign a contract with the UAE-based Bloom Properties to build 40,000 [...]
Posted in Construction & Engineering0 Comments
17 May 2012
Bloomberg reports that Iran Khodro, the country’s largest carmaker, plans to manufacture 30,000 cars at its production site in Iraq this year. The company is delivering components to the plant for assembly, mostly for the Samand sedan model (pictured). Operations at the plant, which has received investment from a local partner, started in 2011, the [...]
Posted in Construction & Engineering, Industry & Trade0 Comments
17 May 2012
Russia’s Gazprom Neft is expecting to start exporting from its East Badrah oil field in Wasit [Wassit] province early next year, according to AKnews. Alexander V Kolomatsky, Project director for the Middle East at Gazprom, said the company had initially planned to reach the 15,000 bpd level by the last quarter of 2013 because the [...]
Posted in Oil & Gas0 Comments
17 May 2012
The University of Mosul has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Northern Ireland’s Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI) to increase collaboration and student exchange in areas such as food sciences. AFBI provides expert diagnostic and analytical testing services to the Northern Ireland agri-food industry, and to clients abroad, and the Belfast Telegraph reports that [...]
Posted in Agriculture, Education & Training0 Comments
17 May 2012
Iran and Iraq will start new round of talks in Tehran on 26th May on issues such as developing the Sohrab joint oilfield and establishing a joint oil company, Iran’s Mehr News Agency reports. The managing director of the National Iranian Central Oilfields Company, Mehdi Fakour, said that eight drilling rigs are currently in operation [...]
Posted in Oil & Gas0 Comments
17 May 2012
The following article was published by Reidar Visser, an historian of Iraq educated at the University of Oxford and currently based at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. It is reproduced here with the author’s permission. Any opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Iraq Business News. [...]
Posted in Politics0 Comments
16 May 2012
Hill International, the global leader in managing construction risk, announced on Monday that it has been awarded a contract by the Iraq Ministry of Youth and Sports to provide project management services in connection with construction of the new Al Risafa Sports Stadium in Baghdad, Iraq. The three-year contract has an estimated value to Hill [...]
Posted in Construction & Engineering0 Comments
16 May 2012
Iraq is to import 250 megawatts of electricity from the United Arab Emirates in a bid to alleviate the country’s electricity shortage. Electricity Ministry Spokesperson, Musaab al-Mudarres, said the power will be supplied by UAE’s Oilfield Services at a price of 7.5 cents per kilowatt-hour. According to the report from Aknews, the spokesman added that [...]
Posted in Public Works0 Comments
16 May 2012
In preparation for the World Energy Outlook (WEO) 2012 special report on the Iraq energy outlook, the International Energy Agency (IEA) held an informal one-day workshop in Istanbul, Turkey on 4 May 2012. The workshop was chaired by Dr. Fatih Birol, IEA Chief Economist, and had some 85 attendees, including His Excellency Thamir Ghadhban, Chairman [...]
Posted in Oil & Gas0 Comments
16 May 2012
The Philippine government has lifted the ban on the deployment of overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) to Iraqi Kurdistan, according to ABS and AFP. In 2004 then-president Gloria Arroyo withdrew a contingent of Filipino police and soldiers assigned to the US-led coalition in Iraq after a Filipino truck driver was kidnapped and threatened with beheading. The [...]
Posted in Employment, Industry & Trade0 Comments
16 May 2012
AKnews reports that one hundred unlicensed pharmacies were shut down throughout Iraq in April, and four tons of out-of-date medicine were seized and destroyed. The Inspector General at the Health Ministry, Adel Muhsin, said the ministry closed the pharmacies for selling drugs that were unfit for human consumption and came from unknown factories and origins. [...]
Posted in Industry & Trade0 Comments
16 May 2012
Iraq’s Ministry of Higher Education has allocated $104 million (122 billion Iraqi dinars) to research and development projects, according to a report from Aswat al-Iraq. Media Director Qassim Mohammed Jabbar said that research and development projects included the provision of scientific laboratories and financing research fellowships. (Source: Aswat al-Iraq)
Posted in Education & Training0 Comments
15 May 2012
Australia will make an initial investment of $2.5 billion in Iraq’s agriculture sector, according to a report from AKnews. Lyndall Sachs (pictured), Australia’s Ambassador to Iraq, made the statement during a joint press conference with Wasit Governor, Mahdi al-Zubaidi. The government will start with soil reclamation projects in Wasit, Dhi Qar, and Diwaniya provinces, and [...]
Posted in Agriculture0 Comments
