High-Level Iraqi Delegation Holds Talks with the World Bank and IMF in Washington
In Washington’s spring air, Iraq’s fiscal vanguard—Finance Minister Taif Sami Muhammad and Central Bank Governor Ali Al-Alaq—entered the World Bank–IMF Spring Meetings with a single, unspoken mandate: convince the guardians of global liquidity that Baghdad’s reform project is both credible and investable.
Their opening salvo, a strategy session with World Bank Executive Director Abdulaziz Al-Mulla, aligned Iraq’s revenue-diversification agenda with the Bank’s readiness to bankroll digital-era infrastructure, from customs automation to smart-grid power.
Parallel talks with IFC Regional VP Hela Cheikhrouhou produced a pledge to expand private-sector financing under the nascent Iraq Development Fund—essential if Basra’s ports and Baghdad’s metros are to wield catalytic, rather than cannibalistic, debt.
The delegation’s rendezvous with World Bank MENA Vice President Ousmane Dione elevated the conversation from spreadsheets to steel rails: Iraq’s flagship railway corridor now sits atop a portfolio review designed to purge bottlenecks and accelerate disbursement.
Crucially, Minister Sami pressed for human-capital allocations—education, health, and social protection—signaling that the cabinet views demographic stability as a pre-condition for any future exchange-rate liberalization.
At IMF plenaries chaired by Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, Baghdad echoed Fund orthodoxy on buffer-building and debt discipline, yet quietly recast it through a dinar-centric lens. Discussions with Executive Director Dr. Mohamed Maait and Mission Chief Jean Guillaume homed in on Treasury Single Account completion, tax-and-customs automation, and a broader digitization drive—technocratic steps that, in IMF parlance, constitute the “pre-revaluation hygiene” required before a confidence-sensitive currency can be set free. The Fund’s technical teams agreed to fast-track capacity-building for Iraq’s revenue authorities and to draft pension-system reforms, acknowledging that fiscal leakages, not oil price volatility, are now the chief threat to macro-stability.
Governor Al-Alaq’s side-bar with Jihad Azour, Director of the IMF’s Middle East and Central Asia Department, underscored the point. Azour blessed Baghdad’s phased banking overhaul—from Basel III capital templates to an imminent upgrade of anti-money-laundering protocols—while hinting that the Fund stands ready to endorse “further monetary modernisation” once supervisory milestones are met. In market parlance, the door to an eventual dinar adjustment is ajar; the hinge is structural reform.
Beyond the photo-ops, the Iraqi team’s performance signaled a maturing policy mix: fiscal consolidation without growth asphyxiation, monetary prudence without dinar paralysis, and, above all, a pivot from petrodollar dependency to diversified value creation. Should Baghdad translate these Washington pledges into measurable KPIs by year-end, the prospect of a recalibrated—some would say revalued—Iraqi dinar will migrate from chat-room rumor to policy-backed possibility.
Read more here: INA