Employment trumps privatisation in Iraq economic plan
The US government is wanting to open up and have been opening up State owned Enterprises or (SOE's) inside Iraq in order to create jobs and get more Iraqi's back to work. There are over 200 SOE's and just recently the Iraqi government along with their US partners and funding have opened up manufacturing plants in the south and other areas.
I had posted in the past about manufactures opening up and being funded by the USA.
The UN-brokered economic compact signed this week with great fanfare aims to create a liberal free market in Iraq, but US officials admit that for now this approach will take a back seat to more statist job creation schemes.The deal was approved on Wednesday at a conference in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh by the leaders of more than 50 countries, who agreed to fund reconstruction if Iraq meets certain economic benchmarks.
The agreement urged Iraqis to set up what the US State Department's pointman on Iraq, David Satterfield, described last month as "the basis for a liberal, investment-friendly, investor-friendly economic regime."
But, while the language echoes Washington's dreams for transforming Iraq before the March 2003 invasion, officials on the ground admit that, in the short term, reviving state-owned industries to create jobs will take priority.