Dinar.. Currency and Symbol - Abdul Karim Ahmed Al-Zaidi, 2 FEB

 Dinar.. Currency and Symbol - Abdul Karim Ahmed Al-Zaidi

January 31, 2025   When a country has its own local currency that it uses in internal transactions, it is inevitably affected by external trade transactions, which require, through financial relations, dealing in foreign currency, which is what we call hard currency that we need in import operations and other financial payments for the various transactions of the country outside its borders. 

For this reason, the importance of preserving the value of the local currency appears, and what is meant in our country is the Iraqi dinar with its equivalent value of hard currency in the external trade environment. 

The responsibility for this process and preserving the value of the local currency falls on the Ministry of Finance, as it is authorized in these transactions in coordination with the Ministry of Trade and other bodies within its jurisdiction.

What concerns us here, considering that our country is still in dire need of supplying its people’s needs of materials, goods and local market requirements and its reliance on selling crude oil as an economic resource, is to maintain the value of the local currency and enhance its purchasing power against foreign currencies. 

To be fair in our presentation of the subject, the Ministry of Finance has done its best in attempts to support the local currency and reduce its impact on the exchange of its equivalent in hard currency. 

Perhaps the most prominent of these is offering the sale of hard currency in the financial markets at a price that competes with the inflation in the exchange rate of hard currency and monitoring the implementation of its instructions in the commercial dealings market in an attempt to stop the decline in the value of the local currency.

However, the situation, as it seems, does not represent an ideal solution to this situation after all commercial dealings and markets have become parallel to the exchange value. This matter requires a scientific and practical way out that preserves the value of the local currency and restores its prestige among foreign currencies and strongly fights all efforts to weaken its immunity and weaken its ability to compete again with other circulating currencies. 

Perhaps Iraqis remember the market dealings with simple and metal money and small coins, which are not far away, and this is frankly what prompted me to review the history of the beginning of the birth of the Iraqi dinar in the year 1932, and after it was It was linked to the US dollar after 1959, so that each Iraqi dinar became equal to 2.8 US dollars. 

It maintained its value until 1973, when it became equal to 3.37 per US dollar after the United States devalued its currency in 1972.

Unfortunately, the situation did not remain the same after Iraq devalued its currency, and the dinar remained in circulation equal to 3.2 per US dollar. It maintained its circulation until the Second Gulf War in 1991, despite the fact that the exchange rate of the Iraqi dinar on the black market was 3 dinars per dollar in late 1989.

I repeat that the supervisory authorities and the Central Bank of Iraq have a responsibility to work on finding a way out of this crisis and to overcome the weakness of the local currency with solutions that go beyond the short-sighted view that many financial and economic experts still resort to without any salvation, and to bring life back to the Iraqi dinar after a long period of slumber and weakness. LINK