The CBI board of directors decided...to hold meeting with only all of their executives of all their banks...These two or three meeting are going on... This is on the subject of the monetary reform, lower notes, exchange rate, budget ... These next few days are going to be very silent. The press will not cover
it. No one will know anything about it. They will suppress this information...This silence is normal and to be expected right now. [Aki] has seen this quietness before when the CBI was getting ready to make a major move.
Walkingstick
Sudani rewrote the contracts and recalculated them in accordance with the rate in the budget...They've been running a budget with the new exchange rate and a budget with the old exchange rate...
[Iraqi bank friend Aki update]
AKI: It's about time.
WAlKINGSTICK: What he's telling us is it's about time to release the budget and the new exchange rate with the lower notes. That's what he meant.
The ATM machines, they're all poised like centurions that are standing there. These ATMs are guarding the lower notes. It's time for all of this to come out now. It's just the budget we are waiting for. We're not waiting for any laws, we're not waiting for any new procedures.
Economy Oil and Gas Law.. The Unsolvable Knot Information/Report.. The Oil and Gas Law is one of the sensitive laws in the Iraqi state, as it is one of the axes of the ongoing conflict between the central and regional governments over oil imports.
The center of the dispute over the law is that the region wants to control the oil revenues in its lands according to its mood without the supervision of the federal government, while the political forces do not want to grant this privilege to the region because it gives it a kind of separatist independence, so to speak.
Since the first session of the Iraqi Parliament in 2005, the draft oil and gas law has been stuck in the drawers, as disagreements prevent its approval in its final form.
After 18 years, he announced the formation of a committee to draft the law and present it to the government and the House of Representatives.
The committee formed between Baghdad and Kurdistan to draft an oil and gas law includes the Minister of Oil, the Minister of Natural Resources in the region, the Director General of SOMO, and senior staff in the Ministry of Oil, in addition to oil-producing provinces such as Basra, Dhi Qar, Maysan, and Kirkuk.
Iraq exports an average of 3.3 million barrels of crude oil per day, and black gold constitutes more than 90 percent of the Iraqi treasury's resources.
Article 14 relates to oil revenues in the Kurdistan Region and their audit by the Federal Audit Bureau.
The Iraqi Oil and Gas Bill regulates this vital sector for Iraq and the management of the country’s oil fields through a single national company, with revenues deposited into a single account.
The financial advisor to the Iraqi Prime Minister, Mazhar Mohammed Salih, confirmed in statements that accelerating the approval of the federal oil and gas project law in the House of Representatives as soon as possible will establish a stable national roadmap for investment and production of the country's primary sovereign resource, which is oil and gas.
He explained that this "natural resource contributes directly to Iraq's gross domestic product by nearly 50 percent, and has an indirect impact on our country's total economic activity by no less than 85 percent."
Saleh said, "Adopting a unified national oil policy, and achieving optimal investment and production in Iraq's oil area, starting from the southern fields and going up to the northern and regional fields, is an important and strategic matter in the matter of benefiting from opportunity costs in the optimal and harmonious operation of the current Iraqi oil policy."
The draft of the Iraqi oil and gas law available to parliament stipulates that the responsibility for managing the country's oil fields should be entrusted to a national oil company, supervised by a federal council specializing in this matter.
For its part, the Kurdistan Oil Law indicates that the Iraqi government has the right to participate in the management of fields discovered before 2005, but fields discovered after that are subject to the regional government.
In 2022, the Federal Court in Baghdad ordered the region to hand over the oil produced on its territory to Baghdad, and to cancel contracts signed by the region with foreign companies. The matter went so far as to invalidate contracts with many foreign companies, especially American and Canadian ones, by the judiciary in Baghdad.
After years of exporting oil alone via Turkey, the Kurdistan Region must, as of late 2023, abide by an international arbitration ruling that gives Baghdad the right to fully manage Kurdistan’s oil.
As a result, exports from the region stopped. An interim agreement signed between Baghdad and Erbil stipulates that Kurdistan’s oil sales will be made through the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO), while revenues generated from the region’s fields will be deposited in a bank account at the Central Bank of Iraq or one of the banks approved by the Central Bank of Iraq.
Oil and Gas Law.. The Unsolvable Knot 7de13617-1067-4c34-ac1f-eeeb319b03ca
Member of the Parliamentary Oil and Gas Committee, MP Dhurgham Al-Maliki, revealed that the Coordination Framework and the State Administration Coalition discussed the oil and gas law with Masoud Barzani.
Al-Maliki told Al-Maalouma Agency, "The committee discussed the draft law in a professional manner and completed most of its paragraphs, but the government requested its withdrawal to make amendments to it, indicating that the law is still in the government's possession."
He considered that "the obstruction of the approval of the annual budgets is due to the oil disputes between the center and the region, indicating that the approval of the law has become an urgent necessity due to its ability to resolve 90% of the disputes between the region and the center."
He stressed that "the legislation of the law is governed by political agreement, not professional agreement," calling on "political forces to pressure the government to send the law for the purpose of legislation." LINK
Key players are ready to get this thing done. It's a very good sign. I honestly believe we're watching history in the making...We're seeing progress like no other...If you're paying attention I think you guys should be really pumped and excited that things are happening.
Al-Sudani told us what?
The project to delete the zeros is on the table. He said $1 will equal 1.32 dinars...If you look at the math, that's dropping the 3-zeros.
The Oil and Gas [Law] and the presidency of the House of Representatives, I think those are going to be coming, tie to tie, hand in hand because...if they need to value...assets, they're going to need a real effective exchange rate...
The Iraqi Private Sector and Improving the Investment Environment in the National Development Plan 2024-2028
During the past three months, the Ministry of Planning and the specialized work teams have made efforts to prepare and prepare the National Development Plan 2024-2028, the draft ofD which addressed in detail the main challenges facing the Iraqi private sector and the main objectives aimed at achieving its effective contribution to improving the investment environment.
While I agree with what is stated in the plan, we emphasize the need to add the basic pillars stated in the private sector development strategy.
For the years 2014-2030, and in particular its three time periods, its four pillars, its four pillars, what has been achieved since its launch in 2014, and what has not been achieved.
It is also necessary to state what has been achieved from Iraq’s Vision 2030, which clearly outlined the path to achieving a “strong and developing private sector.”
In addition to determining what has been achieved during the implementation of previous national development plans and the economic, financial and banking reform strategy included in the government program of the current government and what is the real role through which the private sector should contribute with government participation and support in managing the overall economy. This requires providing a legislative environment and a stable business environment and focusing on the axes that aim to build sound preliminaries for the transition to a complete economic reform. This is what we all agree on, but this requires the government and the private sector in all its banking, industrial, agricultural, energy, health, construction, tourism and service sectors to participate and cooperate in implementing the transitional, medium and long-term economic reform strategy.
This means involving the private sector in a greater role in economic decision-making and leading the market institutionally and legislatively through the following:
1- Contributing with the government to improving the business environment in Iraq and providing an encouraging investment climate to attract national and foreign capital in accordance with the government’s program and encouraging and stimulating the achievement of partnerships between the public and private sectors in financing and developing development projects that have achieved implementation rates.
Good and its allocations are included in the general budgets of 2024 and 2025
2- Contributing with the government to creating a new legislative environment based on Article (25) of the Permanent Constitution, the strategies and laws related to economic reform, the private sector development strategy, its pillars and specific contents, in a way that ensures its activation and leadership of the market in the future.
3- Maintaining and activating the partnership, dialogue and cooperation between the private sector and the government by taking rapid measures to activate the Private Sector Development Council and start its work under the chairmanship of the Prime Minister, enacting a special law for it and forming a joint advisory council from the government and private sectors linked to the council that includes experts from the various economic sectors nominated by the council members and provides its advice and works according to a special system approved by the council.
4- Contributing with the government in developing policies, mechanisms and strategies and participating in following up on their implementation to resolve the transition to time-programmed stages to a market economy.
5- Working with the government to provide additional sources of funding for the state’s general budget by adopting the development and diversification of resources towards raising the percentage of resources other than oil in the gross domestic product, by activating the real economy and diversifying sources of national income.
6- Work to encourage the establishment and development of small, medium and micro enterprises in order to achieve comprehensive and sustainable development, including the formation of specialized institutions for this purpose and issuing a special law to develop and advance these projects and determine their economic feasibility and benefit from the Riyada initiative launched by the Prime Minister and the National Lending Strategy launched by the Central Bank on 5/25/2024.
7- Cooperation in financing and ensuring the implementation of central plans to provide infrastructure to encourage and develop the private sector in industry, trade, agriculture, tourism, health, energy, construction, strengthening and services.
8- Activating the role of specialized banks and private banks to provide soft loans to the national private sector, as well as finding solutions to the problems of taxes and accumulated interest incurred by owners of projects that have stopped production, and setting a short- and medium-term financial policy.
9- Coordination and cooperation with the relevant ministries and financial and statistical institutions, especially the Ministries of Planning and Finance, in building a financial and statistical information base and ensuring its transparency. link
Article quote: "Saleh showed in the news that the fixed exchange rate system in Iraq is based on the international reserve base that is the highest in Iraq's history and monetary policy as their foreign currency covers more than 100% of its total currencies issued."
I spoke about this before saying that the more Iraq has in foreign currency reserves the stronger its currency will be. Right now they're at the highest it's ever been.
Are you going to tell me July 18th is coming up Pimpy...They have to change the exchange rate in order to be a member of the World Trade Organization. As I explained before, Iraq has been a member of the World Trade Organization since 2004.
They're just going through to re-qualify. That's it. The World Trade Organization has nothing to do with Iraq's official exchange rate. That has to do with the IMF and the World Bank...Just because they have a meeting on the 18th, that's just for them to go to the next step...The WTO has nothing to do with the exchange rate.