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Qusay Saddam seized $900 million and loaded it in trucks in 2003 - Central Bank Governor
10/30/2024
The Governor of the Central Bank, Ali Al-Alaq, said that the lessons are now sufficient for the state to move towards setting a “strict and conservative” oil price in the general budget, to avoid the pressure of declining crude prices, calling for the enactment of a law that sets the size of spending with a specific oil ceiling to ensure its coverage on the one hand, and to ensure the financing of investment projects on the other hand, noting that the three-year budget needs some new tables and amendments in line with the variables of oil prices.
Ali Al-Alaq, in an interview during the Merry Forum, followed by the 964 Network :
The role of the Central Bank cannot be reduced to the currency selling window and some marginal tasks. It is a fundamental pillar of economic and financial stability in the country. Here we must highlight a number of achievements since 2004 until today, the most important of which is maintaining the general price level, meaning the ability to manage the monetary mass in Iraq, in a way that does not lead to inflation or deflation.
After 2003, we inherited an abnormal situation devoid of any real basis for stability. Our reserves that year were $900 million, and they were seized by Qusay Saddam Hussein and loaded onto a truck. This is documented by dates and numbers. So we started from scratch. The money supply in circulation was only 4 trillion dinars. Today, the volume in circulation exceeds 100 trillion dinars, and our reserves have exceeded 100 billion dollars.
The inflation rate today is 3.8%, which is a typical rate that achieves stability and prosperity. It is an indicator of our ability to manage a monetary mass exceeding 104 trillion dinars, which does not allow pressure on purchasing power, and this is considered the most important factor in monetary and economic stability.
We have an additional mission, as we have to introduce all the tools, systems and entities that we have failed to catch up with the world with during the previous decades, and therefore there is a race against timeto move towards the digital economy and advanced payment systems, as we have licensed 16 companies for electronic payment, and we are currently working on licensing digital banks, in addition to achieving advanced stages in establishing a national company for managing payments, and the Central Bank will be a partner in it to enhance it with sufficient support.
As for the reform dimension, we are currently working on two plans to reform government and private banks, which will lead to their restructuring in a way that ensures transparency, governance, and ownership structure in appropriate ways, to be consistent with international standards.
The last dimension of our work, which is not practiced by most central banks in the world, is that we work to stimulate the economy directly through lending initiatives to various sectors. The volume of loans granted to the construction and industrial sectors has reached more than 13 trillion dinars, an amount that exceeds what has been lent throughout the history of the Iraqi state. In addition, we have sought to launch initiatives to lend to small and micro-enterprises, and we have reached advanced stages of establishing a bank specialized in this initiative, and we have named it “Riyada” Bank.
We noticed that the inflation rate in 2023 was 7.5%, as the volume of issued currency jumped from 40 trillion to 100 trillion dinars, meaning that it increased in two years by an amount equivalent to its increase in the previous 18 years, and therefore we decided to withdraw part of the cash liquidity by raising the interest rate and attracting trillions of dinars from the market, although this measure is costly, but the Central Bank does not base its policies on profit and loss, but rather on the basis of performing its main function of controlling the market.
The increase in public debt is a result of the budget deficit, which is the result of increasing spending without increasing revenue. Over time, spending has become inflexible and cannot be reduced, such as the salary bill and others, and this causes a structural imbalance in the Iraqi economy.
The idea of the three-year budget is in effect in many countries of the world, and we decided to move towards it in order to ensure stable implementation, although it requires the issuance of some tables and amendments to address some variables, such as oil prices, for example.
The fiscal year will end and the oil price rate remains within our estimates in the budget, but the lessons have become sufficient for us to set a conservative oil price so that the state does not face economic pressure with the fluctuations of the global oil market. Therefore, a law must be passed that sets the share of expenditures from oil revenues with a certain ceiling, in order to ensure that it is covered on the one hand, and to ensure that the financing of investment projects that are exposed to blows with every drop in oil prices is not disrupted in order to cover the expenditure ceiling.
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