Iraq Lagging in Foreign Investment
Iraq is still struggling to attract foreign investors amid dated laws, political instability and a conservative society, writes Mustafa al-Kadhimi.
The question that constantly arises in Iraq, and that is often posed perplexedly, is: “Why have the Iraqis failed to attract large-scale investments over the past ten years of political and economic change?”
Figures certainly indicate that the arrival of international oil companies is an example of successful investment. Yet the answer to the above question is evident when examining the laws of the Iraqi National Investment Commission, which doesn't include oil investment in its scope of work. Oil extraction and marketing is quite different from the investment movement, which is primarily linked to market development, higher employment and training, introduction of various industries into the country, and agricultural, touristic and urban development.
It is well-known that Iraq is a single product economy, where oil export accounts for 95% of the country's budget.
We can talk for hours about how the investment law serves as a real obstacle to bringing in foreign companies. It is clear that the investment law in force in the Kurdistan region of Iraq is more flexible than its counterpart in Iraq’s Arab regions.
