Prime Minister's Advisor: Iraq in the process of paying off long-term development loans to the World Bank

 Prime Minister's Advisor: Iraq in the process of paying off long-term development loans to the World Bank

The financial advisor to the Prime Minister, Mazhar Muhammad Salih, confirmed today, Saturday, that zeroing out the debts to the International Monetary Fund reflects Iraq's high and solid creditworthiness, while indicating that Iraq is in the process of paying off long-term development loans to the World Bank.

 Saleh told the Iraqi News Agency (INA): "Iraq has entered into about 5 programs with the International Monetary Fund since 2004 until the end of 2018, including 3 credit readiness programs, and all of them were characterized by providing loans whose function was to support the state of stability and economic reform in Iraq in two directions. The first: loan programs, as Iraq received loans from the International Monetary Fund to help it overcome economic crises, as these loans included supporting the general budget and financing economic stability programs, especially during the war on ISIS terrorism."

He added: "As for the other direction: in the field of economic reforms, as the International Monetary Fund usually stipulates that countries that receive loans implement certain economic reforms. In the case of Iraq, these reforms included improving the management of public finances and the banking sector, enhancing transparency, combating corruption, and reforming the energy sector."

He pointed out that "these loans did not exceed $5 billion per loan, and the actual withdrawal from them will not exceed $3 billion or more in each case, and according to a repayment program that takes place every 6 months with grace periods of two years before repayment with a moderate annual interest that usually does not exceed 4.5%, and the terms of these loans do not exceed five years."

He pointed out that "Iraq has repaid the loans that were withdrawn during the past twenty years according to regular payment mechanisms and are close to zeroing out unless they are all zeroed out today, which reflects the high and solid creditworthiness of the Republic of Iraq in repayment before the international financial community in particular and towards multilateral international financial organizations in general."

He continued: "But certainly there are long-term development loans that belong to the World Bank that are still in place, which is another development financial organization, and are worth a few billion and are in the process of repayment, and some of them are still in the process of committing to withdrawing them to spend them on completing development projects contracted with the World Bank, and they are also long-term soft loans."

He stressed that "cooperation relations continue between Iraq and the International Monetary Fund in various fields, including providing technical advice and supporting economic policies," noting that "the relationship between Iraq, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank is important for achieving economic stability and sustainable development in the country."

He pointed out that "Iraq has been a founding member of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank since 1945."  link