The governor of the Central Bank, Ali Al-Alak, stressed on Wednesday the importance of cooperation at the level of exchange of experiences and the process of transferring funds to facilitate trade between Iraq and Azerbaijan.
The media of the Central Bank, in a statement received by “Economy News”, said that “the relationship received the Azerbaijani Ambassador to Iraq Naseer Muhammadov, and during the meeting, they discussed the cooperation relations between Iraq and Azerbaijan and ways to develop them to include various economic fields.”
The governor stressed the need to improve the nature of bilateral relations and expand the horizons of cooperation in the banking field of the two countries, as well as its positive repercussions on the economic, tourism and investment sectors,” pointing to “the importance of cooperation at the level of exchange of experiences and the process of transferring funds to facilitate trade between the two countries.”
For his part, the ambassador stressed the importance of economic relations with Iraq and the need to overcome obstacles to their strengthening and growth, “inviting the governor to visit Azerbaijan in preparation for future cooperation in the economic and banking fields.”
In an important presentation before the Miri Conference on Economic, Financial and Banking Reform, the Governor of the Central Bank, Mr. Ali Mohsen Al-Alak, explained the indicators of the recovery of our national economy and the major transformations in the structuring of government and private banks achieved in 2023 and 2024 and expected in 2025, which are standard indicators that are adopted in assessing the strength of the economy and the sobrity of the banking sector.
One of the most prominent of these indicators is the adequacy of foreign cash reserves, the exported domestic currency, the rate of inflation and external debt, while stressing that the monetary policy objectives of the Central Bank contained in its law are to achieve growth and economic stability and economic stability and that one of its main objectives is to achieve stability in the financial system and the 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 the world is going through, especially the countries of the current geographical region, which affects our country negatively and positively.
These conditions have been suffering from our economy for decades, and the reason is the reason is the rent of the economy and the dependence of 95% of the general budget revenues on oil, which constitute approximately 60% of the gross domestic product. The government is making clear efforts to reinform the effective economic sectors, namely agriculture, industry, tourism, customs and tax services fees, and the rise in their share in the general budget revenues to 20%. The low contribution of these sectors to the GDP led to the absence of local production that covers the consumer need of citizens for food and other basic materials, so the dependence was almost total on imports for the commercial private sector and from different origins, and successive governments were unable to control internal trade and trade regulation. Weak control over illegal trade and informal border ports have led to the impact of the monetary and commercial market.
Therefore, this indicator was the most prominent challenges faced by 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 in regulating foreign trade, controlling control over foreign transfers, regularity in the global financial and banking system, complying with international standards and digital transformation in the banking sector, and working to prepare and launch its new strategy for reform and banking classification in all its basic circles at the level of internal and external banking transactions, the most prominent of which is securing the US dollar for large and registered traders and each trader, regardless of his classification at the official price through the electronic platform exclusively.
This was achieved through the analysis of indicators of the annual inflation rate of 3.8% after it was 4.4% and compared to the annual inflation rates of regional and neighboring countries. Most of these countries have reached very high inflation rates, reaching 80.4% in Turkey, Sudan 117.4%, Iran 40.0%, in the Maghreb countries with relative economic stability in Tunisia 9.3%, Algeria 9.0% and Morocco 5.0%, Egypt reached 37.4% and ranged in the Gulf countries with stable economies and oil rich between 2.4%.4%. This confirms, and there is no doubt that the Central Bank’s strategy and procedures during the years 2023 and 2024 achieved one of the main monetary policy objectives, which is to reduce the inflation rate and maintain the general level of the prices of goods and services, and is currently working to achieve the other goals, which are stabilizing the exchange rate and maintaining a foreign reserve that covers the local currency. In trading and imports, which exceeded 100 billion dollars and enough 140% to cover the local currency in circulation.
So the economic results and outputs confirm that the policies and procedures carried out 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 other objectives of monetary policy.
We must point out that one of the most prominent indicators of our economy’s strength and recovery is what the International Monetary Fund finally 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 applied by the government and the central bank since 2023.
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
Oil prices fell more than one percent on Wednesday, after Republican Donald Trump elected president of the United States, pushing the dollar up.
Brent crude futures fell $1.32 percent to $74.53 a barrel, while U.S. WTI fell 93 cents, or 1.29 percent, to $71.06 a barrel.
In addition to the impact of the appreciation of the dollar on commodity prices, Trump’s presidency could lead to policies that could increase pressure on the Chinese economy, weakening oil demand in the world’s largest crude oil importer, according to independent analyst Tina Teng.
The dollar is heading for its largest daily rise since March 2020 against its major counterparts with the launch of the so-called “Trump deals”.
The appreciation of the US dollar makes goods denominated in the US currency such as oil more expensive for holders of other currencies.
