PARLIAMENTARY OIL: APPROVAL OF THE OIL AND GAS LAW DEPENDS ON ONE CONDITION
Member of the Parliamentary Oil and Gas Committee, Kazem Al-Touki, revealed the approval condition for approving the oil and gas law.
Al-Touki said {to Al-Furat News} that: “Approval of the oil and gas law at this stage depends on the Kurdish interlocutor, if the center’s entitlements are provided and the ceiling of demands that complicated the law are waived.”
He explained, “The law in general solves all problems in the budget and revenues, each according to its entitlement.” Al-Touki pointed out that “this matter depends on the political situation, stability and trust between the center and the region.”
Bankers and financial experts say that a remarkable jump in the number of Iraqis holding electronic payment cards, during the past months, is encouraging the expectation of major reforms in the type of commercial trading and financial services, and also leads to optimism for the success of the experience of “digital banks”, especially after the “first electronic bank” in Iraq (FIB) obtained a license from the Central Bank, to promote financial transactions through an application within mobile phones.
More than two million Iraqis have issued electronic bank cards over the past 10 months, according to the Association of Iraqi Banks.
The government says it is working to move towards electronic transactions with the aim of reducing corruption and money laundering and controlling the work of banks, instead of paying in fiat currency, but the process is proceeding slowly for various reasons, most notably the reluctance of citizens to adopt the card system, along with the failure of some commercial centers to deal with electronic POS points of sale.
Earlier this year, the government required malls, restaurants, private schools, universities, private colleges, gas processing stations of all kinds and locations and throughout Iraq, to open bank accounts and provide points of sale for electronic payment.
In addition to this path, which seems faltering despite its promising steps so far, local banks have dared to roll out the digital bank model that manages all its financial operations through mobile phones, according to specific criteria.
FIB says it is the first “Iraqi electronic bank” to offer online financial services, without having to check with the bank’s headquarters.
According to data published on its website, the bank relies more on technical experts than accountants, and the required jobs focus on programmers and technology engineers.
It is not yet clear the general indicators of the success of such banks in a country that has been accustomed to fiat currency for decades, and is now struggling to move to card payment late for all the countries of the region, but experts who spoke with the 964 network, said that the experience will constitute a paradigm shift in the Iraqi banking sector, although customers need to overcome their fears of digital transactions that are still new to the country.
Mahmoud Dagher, banker and financial expert for the 964 network:
An e-bank is a bank, like any traditional bank we do business with, but it doesn’t use routine methods that require meeting people in-person to complete and complete transactions.
The electronic bank conducts all its steps over the Internet, relying on digital tools in a special system.
Any citizen (or resident) can open online accounts, to withdraw and deposit funds in easy and secure steps.
Opening accounts and obtaining electronic cards is a good phenomenon, but an Iraqi gap in this area must be addressed, which has been exploited to withdraw the cash dollar outside Iraq and benefit from the price difference in the parallel market.
The e-bank move is a success for the banking sector by relying on electronic payment, but dollar exchange rates have not been affected by this issue so far.
Aland Saifuddin, Technical Director at FIB Bank, for Network 964:
FIB is the first digital bank in Iraq, operating with a license from the central bank.
The financial services we offer are very similar to what other banks offer, but through an in-mobile app.
Besides the digital service, there are branches of the bank in all governorates that provide their services to customers normally.
Anyone can open a bank account in the phone app, through easy and quick steps, and the customer can transfer or receive amounts while he is at home, within a very short time.
Customers’ rights are reserved because the central bank supervises the bank’s work and monitors the actions taken, as it does with the rest of the traditional banks.
Ali Tarek, Executive Director of the Association of Banks, Network 964:
The private banking sector has worked heavily on the development of infrastructure in terms of technology and many banking services are now available through electronic applications such as opening an account, issuing a bank card, transferring between funds, applying for loans and others.
The use of technology contributes to the access of banking services to all segments of society, and leads to increased financial inclusion.
Nabil Jabbar Al-Tamimi, financial expert for the 964 network:
The Iraqi government is trying with the Central Bank of Iraq to expand the work using electronic cards as one of the steps to localize funds for Iraqi government and private banks.
The first economic goal of the government is to provide cash primarily to banks to achieve development goals, and then other objectives that contribute to the process of pushing the commercial market, codifiing complexities and providing general facilities.
Iraqis rushed intensively to acquire electronic cards after government decisions that stipulated expanding the work of electronic cards, including limiting payment to gas stations with electronic payment cards, which may extend to exclusive means of payment for services provided by the government in general in the near future.
Electronic payment has several benefits, including the stability of the national currency, stimulus trade, tax discipline, ease of transactions, speed of trade and services, and control of state revenues.
Electronic payment requires the provision of appropriate infrastructures for such cash operations, such as servers, databases, control and protection programs, and payment and ATM ports.
PARLIAMENTARY RESPONSE: WHY DOES AMERICA NOT WANT POLITICAL STABILITY IN IRAQ?
Former member of the House of Representatives, Muhammad Ibrahim, confirmed today, Friday, that the American administration does not want political stability in Iraq, while explaining the main reason behind this.
“Washington seeks to maintain the economic stability that exists in Iraq, as destabilizing the situation in Iraq will make the Middle East region unstable.”
He stated that “America seeks to ensure the instability of the political situation inside Iraq, to ensure that no decision is taken to remove its forces from the country, and thus it continues to be present in military bases and continues its provocative operations against the security services in various regions of Iraq.”
He added, “The situation in Iraq will continue to be stable despite America continuing its provocations and operations against the security services and the Popular Mobilization Forces, and this makes the situation unstable inside Iraq.”
(All I can say is I told you so. I remember reading a CIA paper on Iraq years ago and it said that according to the US Intelligence Agency that Iraq CAN NOT become power in the region and exploiting its wealth to it’s full potential would allow this. Can you see now what the US is doing to Iraq? Can you see now the policy of the US and what is holding up the reinstatement. However, in spite of the US Iraq will liberate its currency as all obstacles are now removed and there are no more excuses to be used by the US, IMF and the World Bank.)
The financial adviser to Prime Minister Mazhar Mohammed Saleh confirmed on Tuesday that Iraq will enter the advanced digital era early next year 2024, with a large official announcement.
Saleh said, “The government curriculum of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani focused on the principles of reform work in the public administration, which took two basic directions, namely the elimination of the phenomenon of corruption in general and systemic corruption in particular, which is the most serious corruption that contributes more than one detail within the executive branch, and the second trend is to maximize the state’s non-oil revenues and make its percentage in the estimates of the federal budget no less than 20% instead of its low percentages of about 10% or even less, to ensure the goals within the current reform years.”
He added that “the non-oil revenue devices, which are led today by customs and tax bodies, border crossings and others, are at the forefront of the trends of financial and administrative reform. At the level of international indicators, there are three elements that mostly frustrate the efforts of countries in confronting financial and administrative corruption. The first is summarized as follows: dealing with paper transactions with the public and direct human communication, the second: direct monetary dealing in the settlement of levies and others and the risks generated in behavior, and the third: the absence of digital systems in the conduct of transactions without human intervention.”
He continued: “Based on the above, and in order to achieve the goal of the government program in reforming and replacing digital systems in dealing with non-oil voluntary devices, an accurate digital program is being adopted rapidly adopted by the government today, and is based on assessment, examination and electronic collection without direct human intervention and according to advanced digital systems carried out with solid national experiences and in cooperation with major international digital companies, in addition to the experiences of the United Nations Development and Trade Organization, especially in the digital development sectors at border ports, customs and taxes. Thus, Iraq will in early in 2024, has entered the advanced digital era rapidly and there will be a large official announcement in this regard.”
He pointed out that “the replacement of payment systems and the spread of digital transactions, starting from the digital government levies and ending in large and small payments within economic activity, which will culminate in the new digital era for Iraq,” noting that “the acceleration in the use of electronic payments is one of the guarantees of the banking business and the safety and sobriety of its operations, due to the decrease in the so-called (liquidity risk) of the banking system because of its knowledge of daily flows and balances continuously without interruption, which makes banks deal with (dual) flexible cash demand that is not shrinked by liquidity or anticipation of its loss, that is, without the availability of sufficient information due to the high state of uncertainty, which is the prevailing attribute when the absence of digital payment systems, which is disrupted at the same time And the need for accelerated funding to support economic activity.”
He stressed that “such phenomena will undoubtedly all disappear in the digital banking system, and the risk of cash liquidity will decrease due to the high levels of certainty in the flow of funds provided by digital systems in transactions between the public on the one hand, the public and banks on the other, within the framework of the operation of a highly governable and financial transparency digital payments system and meets the needs of the growth of the economic business sector without doubts and hesitation imposed by liquidity risks due to lack of information.”
He pointed out that “there is a correlation between financial inclusion, which means the delivery of banking services to the weakest segments of economic society and the development of digital payments. The replacement of digital payments includes the expansion and upgrading of the number of bank accounts. The opening of a bank account represents the essence of digital financial inclusion. With the development of the digital payments market in Iraq, it is noted that the phenomenon of the opening of bank accounts has increased in a remarkable way recently and tens of thousands of bank accounts that have begun to open daily and continuously, according to what the Association of Private Banks said a few days ago, which means that the Iraqi banking system is in an accelerated movement of change and development commensurate with the new digital age of Iraq, which His principles laid the current government program.”
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