I heard there will be more activity from Redemption banks for later this month as they are getting some last minute instructions... They even used the term “Last minute instructions” So I take that as a very good sign. I am hopeful we are in the last few days or weeks at worse….
A big thing that just happened is the reopening of the pipeline between Iraq and Turkey. They say it can handle an unlimited amount of oil. This is huge for the amount of oil they are exporting. This means more money for their currency.
Question: Do you think things have started? MarkZ: After this week I have no doubts that things have started. And are well underway. I think we are in the rollout process right now.
A government consultant explained how Iraq liquidated and reduced its foreign loans and debt.
“A positive indicator of the decline in external obligations, and future external loans will be limited when needed to income-generating and operating projects,” the Prime Minister’s financial adviser, Mazhar Mohammed Saleh told {Euphrates News}.
He pointed out, “Many of the external debts committed to and not withdrawn have been liquidated, which means that Iraq follows {the golden rule} in borrowing, which is spent that the returns on the use of external loans spent on productive projects exceed the cost of the loan itself, and this is what is called {productive external loans}.”
The government spokesman for Al-Awadi announced yesterday that “the government has taken a series of executive measures, and adopted a package of financial decisions, which ended in reducing external public debt by more than 50%, to reduce the debt from $19.729 billion in late 2022, to $15.976 billion in 2023, reaching nearly $8.9 billion this year.” He pointed out, “These financial steps, (which included the suspension of a number of borrowing operations due to their relaxity and non-productivity, organizing, managing and auditing debts, restructuring and directing some debts to establish strategic projects), aim not to mortgage the Iraqi economy to commitments that may affect, in the future, the political decision, or the path of national development, and they coincide with an urban renaissance, and reconstruction of infrastructure, which opens the way for a promising future and a refreshed economy, in which our current and future generations perform the best performance, and receive the greatest opportunities.”
"JAPANESE Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Friday (Apr 5) authorities will use “all available means” to deal with excessive Yen falls, stressing Tokyo’s readiness to intervene in the market to prop up the currency."
In other words, Japan has to do what is best for their own country at this point. If it means to change monetary policies for their currency, it is going to happen.
These changes will begin to affect shipping prices around the world as Japan formulates new price pressures that will formulate new correlations between other countries' currencies going forward.
This is why it is so important to watch the water because most of our trade actually takes place because of it. New demands such as these have a way of creating a ripple effect across the waters.
This move has the potential to decouple from the dollar as the World Reserve Asset currently dominating trade relations.
ADVISER TO THE PRIME MINISTER: IRAQ IS WITHIN THE SAFE RANGE COUNTRIES IN TERMS OF PAYING FOREIGN DEBTS
Today, Thursday, the financial advisor to the Prime Minister, Mazhar Muhammad Salih, revealed the reasons for reducing annual allocations to pay off foreign debts, while noting that Iraq is among the countries in the safe range in terms of debt repayment.
Saleh said to the Iraqi News Agency (INA): “According to international standards in calculating the ability of the national economy to bear the burden of external debt, Iraq is among the group of countries in the safe range in terms of the global standard for the ratio of the external debt stock,” indicating that “the gross domestic product According to estimates, it does not exceed 20 percent, while the global measure of the debt-to-GDP ratio allows up to 60 percent.
He explained, “Given Iraq’s regularity in repaying its external debts due annually, of which only approximately 20 billion dollars remain, the annual allocations to pay external debts through the federal general budget allocations have begun to show a clear decline and decrease in the amount of external debts due, and this has been reflected.” This is in the 2024 budget tables regarding allocations for external debt payments, compared to the 2023 budget tables, with a difference of decrease that may exceed a billion dollars.
He added, “This matter is reflected in Iraq’s high creditworthiness in repaying its debts to external creditors and its commitment to repayment since the Paris Club Agreement in 2004 until the present. These are annual financial allocation mechanisms whose installments and interest are paid on a regular basis through the annual general budget, and they are decreasing. This means that the external debt gap is heading towards shrinking and then almost disappearing.”
He noted that “the Paris Club Agreement in 2004 dropped more than 100 billion dollars of Iraq’s pre-1990 debt after Iraq obtained a discount on its debts at that time, which was 80 percent and more, and only a little of the remnants of those debts remained after it was removed.” The remainder of it has been scheduled and is paid annually according to a precise and regular accounting mechanism on the part of Public Finance and the Central Bank of Iraq, and the continuous decrease in its allocations is demonstrated by the amount of the decrease in the annual allocation of external receivables from the debts that must be paid and their waiver annually.”