Parliamentary Economy Explains The Mechanism For Regulating Trade And Import Operations In Iraq And The Possibility Of Achieving Them
Economy |Baghdad today – Baghdad Today, Thursday (November 23, 2023), the Parliamentary Economy and Trade Committee clarified the possibility of Iraq succeeding in organizing trade and import operations for some materials and goods through the external financial transfers platform.
Committee member Ali Al-Maksusi told Baghdad Al-Youm, “There is a difficulty in the issue of Iraq’s success in controlling and organizing trade and import operations for some materials such as gold, cars, and mobile phones through the external financial transfer platform, especially with the presence of smuggling operations, tax evasion, and others.”
He added, "Iraq has not yet succeeded in controlling the payment of foreign imports in dollars through the platform. There are still illegal transfers taking place outside the platform," indicating that "this is the reason for an increase in the dollar exchange rate in the parallel market."
Al-Maksousi pointed out that "the matter requires a long time and many technical and legal procedures."
A government source reported on Monday (November 20, 2023) that directives had been issued to adopt trade in gold, cars, mobile phones, and cigarettes within the dollar selling platform soon.
The source explained to “Baghdad Today” that, “Based on the Prime Minister’s directives regarding regulating trade and import operations for some materials and goods, most of which are financed from the parallel market and the negative effects it has on the stability of exchange rates, the Ministerial Council for the Economy will consider proposing important decisions to facilitate and simplify entry procedures.” Importers of goods “gold, cars, mobile phones and cigarettes” to the external money transfer platform.
He added, "These decisions and instructions will be the catalyst for importers of these goods to abandon the process of purchasing and transferring dollars through the parallel market for the dollar and direct them towards the platform for the foreign currency selling window in the Central Bank of Iraq at the official price."
The source confirmed, "This will reflect positively and significantly on reducing the dollar prices in the parallel market, as trade in the above materials contributes the largest proportion of the demand for the dollar in that market."
The Governor of the Central Bank, Ali Al-Alaq, spoke earlier about the reasons for establishing the electronic platform for selling foreign currency, saying: One of the goals of the Central Bank of Iraq that it seeks to achieve is to integrate the banking sector into the global financial markets, because of its importance in developing its work,
and accordingly, it has The bank created an electronic platform to automate subscription mechanisms in the foreign currency selling window to achieve a number of goals, most notably simplifying subscription procedures for financing foreign trade and transparency in procedures,
in addition to providing more opportunities to expand banking activities with foreign correspondent banks and raising the level of compliance with the requirements of the transfer process, as well as attracting a larger segment. of commercial operations available in the market and improving the efficiency of operations related to implementing the sale of foreign currency. LINK