Identity and the Iraqi Budget

So now that Iraqiah is back in parliament, focus has turned to the more important issue of the budget. Most of the discussions seem to be focussing on when it will be passed, but very few are talking about what is actually being passed. I saw a copy of a draft budget that went through [...]

The Glass is Half Empty

I thought I’d take the liberty to present a counter argument to Mousa’s. The glass is half empty. This is because we shouldn’t consider economic success in nominal terms, but by comparing it to potential, and unfortunately, we are no where near this at the moment. Yes, GDP will grow by around 9% a year [...]

The Glass is Half Full

Recently we have written a few pieces on the Iraqi economy and most of them sound pretty bleak. “We have been burdened with oil”, “Iraqis don’t work”, “socialism is destroying us”! But the reality isn’t so depressing. The Iraqi budget is set to be increasing from 96.663 trillion ID (US$ 82 billion) in 2011 to [...]

Perils of a Socialist Economy

On my recent trip to Baghdad I met a manager of a state-run naseej factory (معمل نسيج) factories that make cloth material like cotton or wool for clothes, carpets etc. He told me that they had over 5,200 employees at the factory. It sounded impressive.  He then told me that they spend nearly 3.5 billion [...]

Perils of an oil economy

“No taxation without representation”. That was the slogan people in America used to use against the British colonialists. It’s short, salient and packs a punch. But how about “no representation without taxation”? You see, the oil-rich countries in the Gulf don’t really tax their citizens and are economically autonomous from society. They are not beholden [...]