Monopoly In Banking Services , 15 APRIL

 Monopoly In Banking Services 

 Economy News – Baghdad  Yasser Al-Metwally   In a remarkable step, there is a reading in the recent directives of the Prime Minister regarding stimulating the activity of the private banking sector, as an important paragraph indicated that the Council for Competition and Monopoly Affairs was authorized to take the necessary measures to prevent monopoly in banking services, and this is the paragraph that I stopped at and pondered a lot...

The title was striking and an unprecedented step that, if successful, will create a qualitative leap in the performance of the private banking sector and push it to return to practicing its basic activity of providing credit and loans aimed at achieving the required economic development.

I am certain that one of the most prominent reasons for the decline in the performance of the banking sector is its duties assigned to it by the Banking Law, which is the practice of the activity of banking services and products, such as deposits, credit, and lending, given that deposits are the basis of banking activity, but the government banking sector’s monopoly on banking services and the deprivation of private banks has created an imbalance in the performance of private banks. .

Among these services are government deposits, restricting them to government banks, and depriving private banks of benefiting from them in order to invest them in serving borrowers, which has limited them, and I mean private banks, to rely entirely on the currency window to conduct banking affairs.

Thus, these procedures contributed to neutralizing private banks from performing their development role and pushing them to deviate from their banking duties, and this language is understood by specialists.

If the Competition Affairs Council succeeds in this mission, the directives will bear fruit and achieve their goals.

This is at the level of government monopoly on banking services and its restriction to public (governmental) banks.

To be fair, a new phenomenon of monopoly in banking services has recently emerged, which is summed up by the reliance of a limited number of private banks on dealing in dollars, and this is what was imposed by the circumstances of collective sanctions on many private banks.

Here, the Competition Commission must take this aspect of monopoly seriously and search for means to dismantle this type of monopoly by some private banks, especially those with external partnerships. Note that I am not against participation and I do not target these banks,

but to be fair I say that it is unfair for banks participating with foreign countries, regardless of their nationality, to enjoy state funds and to deprive a number of steadfast Iraqi local banks that received a strong blow with penalties for various reasons, most of which are violations. Call them whatever you want and it is possible to address their deprivation. of dealing in dollars and affected its performance.

We hope that this phenomenon will be studied and fair measures will be taken so that banks are equal in their tasks and duties, that there will be no monopoly on banking services, and that an integrated and competitive banking market will be achieved at the same time.

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