The Biggest Challenge, 21 AUGUST

 The Biggest Challenge

First  2024/08/20   The biggest dilemma that many countries - especially Iraq - are struggling with is their reliance on a rentier economy, which places the state’s capabilities under the control of variables that it may not be able to control and direct, and contributes greatly to the emergence of a clearly unequal class in society, as it also has an impact on spreading ease and resignation among citizens due to the absence of incentive and competition.

In Iraq, oil constitutes more than 90 percent of its total economy, making it a rentier state par excellence. There are many reasons for this, most of which go back to the series of wars and policies of the former regime and the period of economic blockade, and later to political strife and factional conflicts that contributed to the dispersion of resources and the absence of an effective economic policy.

But the status quo is not an imposed fate, and the government program proposed by Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and approved by the House of Representatives included solutions to this dilemma that could be the first steps on a long and arduous path that will take Iraq out of the captivity of dependence on a rentier economy.

The Prime Minister's repeated references to diversifying sources of income and maximizing financial resources from other sources of income, and the urging to pay great attention to the agricultural, industrial and service sectors and activate the tax sector.

All these references reveal the size of the challenge that the government has placed on itself, a challenge that forms the basis of the government's policy aimed at reforming the economy after decades of lack of will and ability to create a secure alternative economy.   https://alsabaah.iq/101373-.html