Business sessions held at Kurdistan conference (DBX)

Activities of Kurdistan Trade Show and Conference for rebuilding Iraq continued at Erbil through a number of sessions and workshops that were held to discuss means of raising Iraq's economic position, attracting investments and legislating laws to protect investor's rights.

Participants in these sessions presented their companies projects in different work fields.

 Trade and investment session

In this session, participant discussed means of raising Iraq's economic state, attracting local investments, legislating laws to protect investor's rights, the role of public owned projects in promoting local and foreign investments and the role of private sector in economic growth.

Mr. Saeed Abdul Al-Ghaneey, a lecturer in Baghdad University stated that public owned projects represent non-central public organizations that produce goods or offer services to society under the government's name. They differ from the work of the central based ministries. Being transparent, they could attain a high degree of performance and efficiency.      

Mr. Saeed added that doing feasibility studies for general projects and its effect on the national economy is necessary before starting these projects. Such projects usually take the form of institutes, offices or companies and are either totally owned by the state or mixed where the state owns 51% and the rest is owned by private sector.   

The goal behind mixing general projects is to activate and promote the growth of national reserve capital, make use of modern technology and recent methods in business management.

Later on, he indicated that the state has an important role in establishing basis of development and progress through spending on research and developing programs, good education system, avoiding social consumption tendency and increasing national reserve capital.

International companies tend to operate in the countries rich in raw materials, inexpensive and skillful man force. Therefore foreign investment concentrates on projects of primary materials sectors such as oil industry, medicine and medical equipments.

Dr. Amer al-azawy talked about the effects of economic, social, political and cultural development on Iraqi society and the importance of choosing the right mechanisms to achieve such development and that requires the existence of a political system that admits religious and cultural diversity and the freedom of thought and opinion which are expressed through civil society organizations such as parties, civil clubs and institutions. 

Director of planning in Ministry of Planning Mr. Gassan Al-Abttan stressed the role of private sector and foreign investments in economic development indicating that Iraq needs to achieve an economic growth rate of 12% to eliminate unemployment which exceeded 30%.

Mr. Gassan went on explaining that investment projects in Iraq will involve 32 million $ during the period 2005-2007. Moreover, he stated that lack of trust between private and public sectors in the previous era led private sector to concentrate on minor agricultural projects only. He confirmed that the government is doing great efforts to achieve economic progress and development. The immigration of private companies outside Iraq results presently from the lack of security and damaged infrastructure which is very necessary to carry out investment projects such as electricity, communication and banking services.

"It is so important to take the necessary steps to establish private investment institutions which will undertake the responsibilities of promotions and attracting foreign investments" he additionally stated.

Iraq is rich in its natural and human resources which attracts investors. "It is important to coordinate work and action between ministries and have a strategy of this coordination" he finalized his speech.   

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