9.14.13
Iraq’s per capita income is rising rapidly, but there are a few areas that Iraqis can spending or investment. The reason for this is routine in government departments (bureaucracy). The resulting violence has subsided in recent years to improve the economic prospects, and returned the market ripe for investment. In 2012, per capita income rose from GDP to $ 6.300 after it had only $ 1,300 in 2004.
In other words that the growing number of Iraqis has money to spend, but there is not a lot of areas of the tunnels.
Bureaucratic obstacles that hinder ambitious projects, and the return of violence threaten to derail the nascent conditions for investment. Abu Laith al-Saadi was among a group of investors who seek to take advantage of the economic situation that is improving steadily, so I decided to group, four years ago, the construction of a shopping center (mall) Western-style in Baghdad. Shopping centers are widely spread in the Middle East, but it disappeared from Iraq during the decades of war and international sanctions.
Abu Laith says that the Iraqi market hungry for attractions such as the Mall shoppers Mansour as the project like this can generate a larger profit margin, which generated a small project in a more stable place like Dubai where enjoys Mall Baghdad profit margin of up to 50%, while the same project in Arab Emirates generates only 7%.
The growth of the Iraqi economy, which depends to a large extent on oil wealth in recent years, In 2012 the growth rate of 8.4% is expected to rise to 9% growth during the current year. With the decline in violence after 2008 until the beginning of this year, investors Iraqis tried to seize the opportunity to develop commercial projects that have nothing to do with the oil sector. Despite the success of Abu Laith investment, he worried about the future of the project because of the deteriorating security situation in Iraq, and he was considering with its partners, the opening of another center, but they are hesitant because of the unrest return to pre-2008 levels. Says: You can not do an investment of this size in poor conditions, if the situation in 2009 was similar to what it is today, what we thought about such a large project, but we started, and when we opened the mall deterioration of the situation again. Not in our hands something to do.
As the daily bombings in Baghdad, is also considered a challenge to the Iraqi investor Fadel Qassem, who is building a small park in the capital, but he says that the bureaucracy in government circles represent another challenge. Like a lot of investors, says Mr. Kassem they were wishing to bypass the bureaucracy inherent in Iraq, but that the return of violence have increased deterioration of working conditions and investors began to feel reluctant to engage in new projects. With the fact that Iraq has the fifth-largest oil reserves in the world, it seems that the content of growth, but it seems clear that the country is unable to develop other sectors, especially with the deterioration of the security situation.
Economic says Ali الفكيكي, Iraqi, who runs a consulting firm: We have inherited all of the government departments and mental concepts from the former regime of what constitutes a real problem facing the investment activity and delay the progress of the country. Mr. Qasim began planning the project since 2009, but that bureaucratic obstacles caused delayed for three years.
Among the other challenges that he spent more than a year in the legal struggle trying to use the land on which granted them one of the government departments to implement the project, but the other department claims that he can not use the land, he says: that the individuals responsible for the investment laws in Iraq lacked learning, so the situation is difficult too, and if so you will not be continued rebuilding of Iraq as quickly as needed, but will be built very slowly.
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