The Iraq Banking Conference Summary January 09
In January of this year Baghdad hosted the Iraqi-International Banking Conference which was hosted by the Iraq Finance ministry. There was hardly any media coverage of this event in the western media as it’s not surprising since no one at the meeting were wounded or killed.
Their were coverage of the banking conference in many of the Baghdad English and Arabic newspapers and most were positive of the event. I will give you a summary based on some of the reporting at the time. The event was held on 28-29 January 2009, Baghdad, Iraq.
The Iraq Finance Minister Al-Zubaydi, had announced the increase in credits to four million dollars for the private sector and the activation of Treasury Bonds to five billion dollars that will be introduced soon, and as of 4 April the Treasury Bonds have still to be announced by the Finance ministry.
Al-Zubaydi called on local and foreign banks to get involved in rebuilding the country due to investment opportunities in sectors of electricity, oil, tourism, services, and hospitals and to think about partnerships with international banks and to hold meetings to accomplish this.
As I have mentioned earlier in another post most of the banks are family owned and to have them partner with an international bank would be difficult not impossible just difficult.
There were quite a lot of people in attendance at the banking conference such as Both ministers of the Finance and Electric ministries, ministers council secretary general, Dr. Thamir al-Ghadhban, the prime minister’s advisor and investment commission chairman, representatives of the International bank and U.S. Treasury; general managers of more then 36 local banks and leading banks in the United Kingdom, United States, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, and Iran; a number of Iraqi, U.S. and British banking experts.
As you can see from the list many financial experts were there and along with JP Morgan and Citibank representatives. Central Bank of Iraq representatives and others.
In the coming year expect to see workshops by the CBI to establish banking mechanism according to International banking rules, and partnerships with private banks and local banks.
Watch the Finance ministry workshops to discuss ways to provide state support to the private banking sector.
The Finance minister has mentioned the importance of discussions on merging the local state and private banks with international banks and said he had spoken to a number of U.S. banking representatives to include JP Morgan.
You will see Arab and international banks in Iraq start to open branches to expand banking operations.
Well, that is all for now a lot is happening that is not being effectively being reported in the media outside of Iraq. Just maybe you’ll see JP Morgan partner with an Iraqi bank for international trade and International fund transfers (wire transfers) with an Iraqi bank.
The inflation rate is rising in Iraq I hear it is now 13% do you think the dinar value will decrease in value?
This summary of information was taking from various sources of local media reports.