New Hospital Approved for Wassit
The Wassit Investment Commission (WIC) has granted an investment licence in the health sector worth more than 6 billion dinars [$5m], chairman of the WIC said on Tuesday. “The licence was given to an Iraqi investor to establish a hospital in Kut, which will include 100 beds and five surgery rooms with modern equipment,” Sadeq […]
Romanian Housing Project in Basra
A Romanian company has received initial approvals to implement a residential project in Basra, according to an official from the Basra Investment Commission (BIC). “The BIC granted its initial approval to a Romanian company to carry out a residential project, which will include 6200 units in al-Kazieza region, northern Basra,” the source told Aswat al-Iraq […]
Iraq Rises as Western Nations Fall
Iraq's developing situation continues to astound me when I contrast it with much of the west. Take the UK, where Prime Minister David Cameron has on 20 October announced £81bn ($127bn) of cuts from total government expenditure of £661bn ($1,040bn), the largest budget cuts in decades by a large margin. All this it needs to […]
Iraq Wants Hundreds of US Billions
...and it looks like it is going to get it. Iraq has lofty investment targets for the next five years. Sami al-Araji, chairman of Iraq's National Investment Commission, told Reuters: "We'd like to go ahead and shoot for $600 billion. We hope of course we can realize it, but we will be very happy if we […]
Concern for Iraq Oil
Iraq's oil pipelines are decades past their use-by-date. “We are afraid of anything happening to them,” said Deputy Oil Minister Ahmad Shamma, according to Iraq Oil Report. US concerns for the ageing infrastructure were pushed as early as 2008, but now billions of dollars are being invested to create new pipelines to protect Iraqi oil […]
100s More Companies in Iraq
Kurdistan's sixth international trade fair in Erbil opened on Monday with 850 companies from 25 countries. Hundreds of companies are at the fair for the first time. Albert Awun of EFB Arak, which organised the fair, told AKnews: "The percentage of the participating new companies in the exhibition compared to last year is about 50%, while the […]
Iraq Output "Will Double"
The Iraq Central Bank said that the survival of a high oil price will double Iraq GDP, helping it to achieve its goals by improving the value of the dinar through economic growth. Speaking to IKHNews, adviser of the Central Bank, Mudhir Saleh, predicted the survival of oil prices in the $80-$85 range, which will double […]
Al-Maliki Turns to Iran
The strategies on Iraq of neighbouring states seem to be coming clearer. This week, al-Maliki has been in Iran to meet both Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president, and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian head of state. Al-Maliki described the two countries' relationship as "strategic", saying: "We ask Iran and our neighbours to support our reconstruction and to boost economic […]
Karbala Gets More Money for Investment
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 […]
Did Iraq Lie About Oil Reserves?
Two weeks ago Iraq revised its estimates of oil reserves upwards, and this was immediately followed by Iran doing the same. Now Reuters reports that a former oil minister has cast doubt on the numbers and on the motivation of the governments in issuing the figures, saying that the estimates are politically motivated and not […]
$60m Allocated to Training Iraqi Oil Workers
Iraq's Oil Ministry announced on Sunday that it has allocated $60m [72 billion Iraqi dinars] from the international licensing contracts sold this year to the development of technical skills amongst Iraqi employees working in the oil sector. At a press conference in Basra, the training director of the ministry’s technical institute, Ali Rahim Fayyad, told […]
MerchantBridge Launches Mesopotamia Fund to Invest in Iraqi Equities
MerchantBridge, the international private equity group with diverse investment interests operating from Iraq, Lebanon, United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom, has launched an Iraq equity fund, the "Mesopotamia Equity Fund Ltd". The Mesopotamia Fund is an open ended fund that will capitalize on the expected long term growth of the Iraqi Stock Exchange (ISX). […]