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FRANK26: "MOST BANK SANCTIONS ARE BEING LIFTED NOW FOR THE MR"......F26
Al-Haims expects lifting of "sanctions" on Iraqi banks: No violations proven
9/30/2024
The Chairman of the Securities Commission, Faisal Al-Haims, confirmed that foreign auditing companies have not proven any violations against the sanctioned Iraqi banks, expecting the US sanctions to be lifted, especially after the Prime Minister’s recent visit to New York.
Al-Haims said, in a televised interview, which was viewed by “Al-Eqtisad News”, that “the Iraqi market needs a banking sector with global compliance standards in order to ‘survive’”, stressing that “the commission aims to increase the number of stock traders by 500%.”
He continued: "We were recently granted the authority to open new branches of the Iraq Stock Exchange, and we agreed to open two new branches in the governorates of Erbil and Sulaymaniyah. We are open and seek to expand the market's spread base and we will agree to any request to open a new branch if the legal conditions are met."
The Chairman of the Securities Commission confirmed: “We are working on promotional campaigns to introduce the function and benefits of investing in the Iraqi Stock Exchange, and the investment sectors in it as well, although the current efforts need greater momentum, but we seek to develop an effective strategy to increase the number of investors in the Iraqi Stock Exchange to 5 times their current number of more than 40 thousand investors, during the next two years.”
He pointed out that "foreign auditing companies have not proven any violations against the sanctioned Iraqi banks, and this is sufficient to lift the Federal sanctions, and we hope that the Prime Minister's visit to the United States will contribute in this direction."
He explained that "the Iraqi economy depends entirely on oil revenues and imports to meet local needs, which confirms the difficulty of living without an effective banking sector, and therefore there is no choice but to create a real banking movement that applies international compliance standards."
He explained that "there is a credit problem in private banks, as customers prefer government banks, despite the big difference in the quality and volume of services provided at the level of deposits and borrowing. However, the government banking sector takes over more than 70% of customers."
