Money and business Economy News – Baghdad The World Gold Council announced today, Wednesday, that Iraq has increased its gold holdings to more than 152.5 tons.
According to the latest table published by the Council for November 2024, which was reviewed by “Al-Eqtisad News”, “Iraq ranked 29th out of 100 countries listed in the table with the largest gold reserves,” indicating that “Iraq ranked third in the Arab world after Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.”
He added, "Iraq increased its gold holdings to 152.6 tons, after it had held 152.5 tons, which represents 11.5% of its remaining reserves."
The Council also pointed out that "the United States of America tops the list of countries with the largest gold holdings in the world, with 8,133.5 thousand tons, followed by Germany with 3,351.5 thousand tons, then Italy with 2,814 thousand tons, while Bosnia and Herzegovina came in last with 1.5 thousand tons."
The World Gold Council is headquartered in the United Kingdom, has extensive experience and in-depth knowledge of the factors that drive market change, and its members consist of the world's largest and most advanced gold mining companies. https://economy-news.net/content.php?id=49544
Samir Al-Nusairi In an important presentation before the MERI Conference on Economic, Financial and Banking Reform, the Governor of the Central Bank, Mr. Ali Mohsen Al-Alaq, explained the indicators of the recovery of our national economy and the major transformations in the structure of government and private banks achieved in 2023 and 2024 and expected in 2025.
These are standard indicators that are relied upon to evaluate the strength of the economy and the soundness of the banking sector.
The most prominent of these indicators are the sufficiency of foreign cash reserves, the local currency issued, the inflation rate and the external debt, while emphasizing that the objectives of the monetary policy of the Central Bank stipulated in its applicable law are to achieve economic growth and stability,
and that one of its main objectives is to achieve stability in the financial and monetary system, reduce inflation rates and stabilize the prices of goods and services in extremely complex economic, security and political conditions that Iraq suffered from in 2023 and 2024 and that the world is currently going through, especially the countries of the geographical region, which our country is negatively and positively affected by.
These conditions have been suffered by our economy for decades, and the reason is the rentier economy and the dependence of 95% of the general budget revenues on oil, which constitutes approximately 60% of the gross domestic product.
The government is making clear efforts to revolutionize the active economic sectors, namely agriculture, industry, tourism, customs and tax services fees, and to increase their share in the general budget revenues to 20%.
The low contribution of these sectors to the gross domestic product has led to the absence of local production that covers the consumption needs of citizens for food and other basic materials.
Therefore, there was almost complete dependence on imports for the private commercial sector from different sources. Successive governments were unable to control internal trade and regulate foreign trade, and the weak control over illegal trade and unofficial border crossings, which led to the impact on the monetary and commercial market.
Therefore, this indicator was the most prominent challenge facing monetary policy and directly affected the stability of the exchange rate, which led the Central Bank to take many measures in cooperation with the government to regulate foreign trade, control foreign transfers, regularity in the global financial and banking system, compliance with international standards, digital transformation in the banking sector, and work on preparing and launching its new strategy for banking reform
and classification in all its basic links at the level of internal and external banking transactions, the most prominent of which is securing the US dollar for major and registered traders and for every trader, regardless of his classification, at the official price exclusively through the electronic platform.
This was achieved through analyzing the indicators of the annual inflation rate, which amounted to 3.8% after it was 4.4%, and by comparing it with the annual inflation rates of regional and neighboring countries. Inflation rates in most of these countries reached very high rates, reaching 80.2% in Turkey, 117.4% in Sudan, 40.0% in Iran, and in the Maghreb countries with relative economic stability in Tunisia 9.3%, Algeria 9.0%, Morocco 5.0%, and in Egypt 37.4%, and in the Gulf countries with stable and oil-rich economies, they ranged between 2.4% and 4.8%.
This confirms, without a doubt, that the strategy of the Central Bank and its procedures during the years 2023 and 2024 achieved one of the basic objectives of monetary policy, which is to reduce the inflation rate and maintain the general level of prices of goods and services.
It is currently working to achieve other objectives, which are the stability of the exchange rate and maintaining a foreign reserve that covers the local currency in circulation and imports, which exceeded $100 billion, with a sufficiency of 140%, which covers the local currency in circulation.
Therefore, the economic results and outputs confirm that the policies and procedures undertaken by the Central Bank in cooperation with the government have achieved an important objective of monetary policy, to achieve stability in the monetary system, which is an important step in achieving the other objectives of monetary policy.
It must be noted that one of the most prominent indicators of the strength and recovery of our economy is what the International Monetary Fund recently predicted, that the expected economic growth rate in 2025 will be 5.3%, while it contracted by 2.2% in 2022.
The expected rate is higher than the growth rates in Morocco, Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, Algeria, Jordan and Qatar. It is an indicator of the strength of our economy and is an inevitable result of the economic and financial reform programs implemented by the government and the Central Bank since 2023. https://economy-news.net/content.php?id=49540
MarkZ Disclaimer: Please consider everything on this call as my opinion. People who take notes do not catch everything and its best to watch the video so that you get everything in context. Be sure to consult a professional for any financial decisions
Member: Good morning folks, I hope the good news keeps flowing!
Member:. Let's get this new era started off with an RV and Nesara.
Member: You think we could have this RV in place before Thanksgiving? We would have a special blessing
MZ: Right now it is very quiet on the RV front as we are waiting for the world to wake up. I know that many of my contacts from around the world were up really late last night waiting for election results …so cannot get answers yet this morning.
MZ: Don’t panic- the world is figuring everything out right now. Hopefully by this evening we will have a better idea what is going on.
Member: I don’t expect anything RV related or Nasera or EBS until January after inauguration. IMO
Member: BUT, Sudani said the monetary reforms in Iraq should be done by Victory Day in Iraq which is December 10th!!!
Member: So maybe Iraq goes alone and first …..and the rest of the world shortly after they go???
Member: There is a rumor that the HCL in Iraq is done….can you confirm?
MZ: There are a lot of rumors overnight we will see HCL this week….Stay calm. We need to see actual physical proof of it.
MZ: Mr. C checked in this morning. No news from him…..yet
Member: Mark- What’s your gut feeling on timing?
Member: Did the election change the trajectory of the R.V.?
Member: this weekend I think it will start
Member: My Bank Story: spoke with the VP we were quickly discussing Wealth Management I stated to her she might want to invest in Dinar, Dong. She gave me her Personal phone number & said call me I heard about it
Member: love your story!
Member: it's true I have her personal phone number and I told her I will call her when it's time to exchange …she is so happy and said she's going out to purchase currency. I told her which ones to purchase.. she put her personal phone number on the bank card.. remember she's VP. she told me that there were other customers who told her about foreign currency
Member: Stock market going to moon and gold plummeting
Member: Funny how the dow can rise to the moon unrestricted,, but let it drop 1,000 points and they stop it.
Member: Either way the economy is going to collapse without getting off of the fiat currency
MZ: With Trump bringing in Judy Shelton –the sound money advocate….things will be even more positive for metals.
Meber: Get rid of the federal reserve and make Judy Sheldon the treasury secretary.
Member: Asset Backed Money Instead Of Fiat Currency Would Be A Great Way To Start IMO
Member: Will the market crash between now and January?.
Member: On the IQD RV side let’s hope this helps and no more excuses!
MZ: Nesara will be a game changer
Member: Yes, Mark Nasara will be the game changer!
Member: BRICS Is GESARA IMO
Member: Went to Banknote world this morning to buy more dong. Website said store front closed. No one answered the phone either. Anyone have any ideas why you can't order from the website?
Member: banknoteworld is down. says store front is closed......rv anyone?! let's go
Member: Let us hope this means something……
Member: I really think the RV could go at anytime now. Keeping my phone charged and hopes high
Member: Tomorrow is Thursday on a 3 day weekend RV RV RV….How great would it be to have the RV on Veterans Day Weekend!!!!!
Member: Have a very Happy Birthday to all of you celebrating!!
Andy Schectman from Miles Franklin joins the stream today. Please listen to the replay for his information.
THE CONTENT IN THIS PODCAST IS FOR GENERAL & EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY&NOT INTENDED TO PROVIDE ANY PROFESSIONAL, FINANCIAL OR LEGAL ADVICE. PLEASE CONSIDER EVERYTHING DISCUSSED IN MARKZ’S OPINION ONLY
WOW! WOW! WOW! I know, I know you are also a bit sick of hearing about these three major reforms groups from the White Paper. But haven’t we also seen so much progress on these reforms too? I have been showing all the articles on these Insurance but especially the Banking and Stock Market reforms. I have been emphasizing them whenever we see them. Remember? They are still ongoing and probably will be even after the reinstatement is done.
Consolidation of banks, mandating only “official” CBI rates, ending corruption
Assignment of banks to foreign banks to replace the currency auctions
Reforms of the Iraqi stock market. Implementing a new investor interface to trade
In an article today titled “FOCUS ON THE BANKING SECTOR’, and I quote from it “Yasser Al-Mutawali notes these days a growing interest in the banking sector in general, both governmental and private. What does this trend mean? This comes amidst a noticeable shift in attention towards the banking sector, through the government allocating significant time in light of its great responsibilities, which means its awareness that all economic activities, including the implementation of strategic projects and means of encouraging investment, require a solid banking sector to implement its economic programs.”
Now you heard it from Yasser and so isn’t this what I have been telling you. Now that many of these banking reforms are working the government shifts its attention and focus more to the 2024 and 2025 budgets to the “implementation of strategic projects and means of encouraging investment”.
Basically, now Iraq’s attention moves away from the banking and stock market sectors, the reforms and now to goes to the economy. All I can say is “I told you so” lol..lol..lol..!😊
WOW! WOW! WOW! Okay, so today in a very recent from a Nov 3rd article titled “IMPORTS AND DEPENDENCE ON OIL ARE OBSTACLES TO IRAQ’S ACCESSION TO THE WORLD TRADE ORGANIZATION” we read about “the financial advisor to the Prime Minister, Dr. Mazhar Mohammed Salih, said: The Iraqi economy lacks regulatory and supervisory regulations in the scope of trade relations and international requirements according to internationally approved standards”. Is this the hold up then?
Oh. But wait a second, hold your horses…. in an article from my Oct 10th Newsletter titled “THE GOVERNMENT COMPLETES THE FILE TO JOIN WTO”, in it we read that “Iraq has become an economic power that should not be underestimated, and has all the qualifications and capabilities to join the World Trade Organization (WTO) after completing all preparations for that”. So, what the hell is this recent article by Salih anyhow? What is Salih trying to tell us? Is he just trying to justify somehow the delay in the WTO full accession announce letting us think there is still much work to be done as the holdup? We are not stupid. We can read. Why is this announcement delayed? Put your thinking caps on for this one…. hint, hint GO RV!
In would like to tell you my “opinion” but if I did and I was wrong many would criticize me and bash me. So, I bring you just the FACTS and so let the FACTS lead us to the future and see how it all plays out between now and the end of the year culminating in early 2025 with the surprise we all pray for. Today is election day and so we begin this journey now that my CBI contact told me is planned to conduct the Project to Delete the Zeros.