While Iraq’s official estimations indicate that Iran invests $10 billion per year in Iraq, the rate of trade exchange between Iraq and Iran amounts to $18 billion, most of which comes from imported Iranian goods. The same applies to Turkey, whose total investments in Iraq amount to $15 billion.
The southeast Asian GICA Organization announced that foreign investment in Iraq in 2012 rose 20-fold, reaching $60 billion compared to $3 billion four years ago.
The company registration department at the Ministry of Commerce announced the registration of 2,808 national and foreign companies in 2012.
Ferial Akram Abdullah, director-general of the company registration department, said in a statement that the department registered 374 representative offices of Arab companies, in addition to 83 branches of foreign companies in the same year.
Although these indicators appear positive, they are not sufficient to talk about a large-scale wave of investment.
In this regard, Suhad al-Obeidi, a member of the work committee and parliamentary services, said that "the large number of representative offices of Arab and foreign companies is a mere formality, the purpose of which is not to bring global expertise or sufficient funds to set up large investment projects, but to find a legal status for local companies to win prospective government project contracts."
In a detailed study titled Legislative and administrative obstacles that prevent the entry of foreign capital to the Iraqi markets, Dr. Akram Fadel Said Qasir, a professor of civil and commercial law, talks about a defect that not only involves the investment law, but extends to the state structure that still drives away foreign investment and involves investors in sensitive and complex details regarding the protection of investments. This is in addition to a cultural environment that is not concerned with attracting foreign investment.
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