Carnegie Middle East: Fake Iraqi companies won reconstruction contracts
The parliament’s investment and economic committee has revealed the reasons behind making Iraq become among the less countries attracting investments, after a report was recently issued by the United Nations putting Iraq and Qatar at the last rank.
In remarks, Nada Shaker Jawdat, member of the committee, said “Iraq has a good investment environment as everything there is destroyed. However, it has oil, money and high population.”
She also added that “the corruption in the country is one of the main reasons that prevented investment in Iraq. Investors do not get any facilities. They can’t finish their work without paying for everyone.”
Moreover, Jawdat said that “the missile shelling and security failure also prevented Iraq from attracting investments.”
In related news, Carnegie Middle East Center, said Iraq lacks an economic vision. It doesn’t have a strategy for reconstructing the regions liberated from ISIS.
In an article, Researcher Louloua Rachid said the Iraqi government ensured it needs US$88 billion to reconstruct what was destroyed during the war against ISIS between 2014-2017.
So far, Baghdad got only small amount of the money from international donors, despite previous international pledges to offer US$30 billion for reconstruction purposes, she said.
Recently, Rachid said several scandals showed that the reconstruction contracts went to fake Iraqi companies owned by senior politicians. These companies resold the contracts to Jordanian and Turkish companies in return for huge sums of money.
She also indicated other problems that hamper the reconstruction of the destroyed regions like corruption and squandering of public money.