The World Bank criticizes the way the Iraqi economy is managed
The World Bank criticizes the way the Iraqi economy is managed
25-01-2018 10:31
Baghdad News
The World Bank has criticized the management of the Iraqi economy, with hundreds of thousands of redundant employees in public sector companies, stressing the need for public-private partnership. “The World Bank underscores the importance of partnership between the private and public sectors in light of the challenges facing the role of public companies,” said World Bank Representative Yara Salem in a report to the Cabinet Secretariat.
She pointed out that «the Iraqi economy is still considered a central economy in which public companies suffer from high production costs as well as unemployment, and what is considered a major obstacle to the reform and restructuring».
A member of the National Central Committee for Poverty Reduction and the end of the problem of public companies MP Najibah Najib in a press statement that «the problem of employees of public companies belonging to the Ministry of Industry and Minerals began since 2004, most of the former military manufacturing and the majority of its facilities to destruction and looting, Each of which has about 6 thousand employees without work waiting for their salaries at the end of each month ». And reported that «a joint committee of the Council of Ministers and the House of Representatives formed in 2014 to study the subject and was able to raise recommendations for a vote, included appropriate solutions and remove all that was prevented from offering privatization or investment, such as reducing the number of employees through their retirement and distribution between ministries, And was opposed to another ».
It revealed that «the salaries of public companies as a whole, estimated at more than 234 companies belonging to the ministries, paid monthly salaries of more than 115 billion dinars ($ 100 million), in the absence of any productive activity and a burden on the Treasury.
“The World Bank imposed on Iraq to reduce the number of employees of the state in general according to an annual plan not announced by the government in exchange for acceptance of lending to Iraq, and this plan requires the transfer of tens of thousands of them annually to retire without compensation for vacant grades. He pointed out that «the number of non-military personnel rose from 850 thousand before 2003 to more than 4.5 million currently, and earn more than 51 trillion dinars».
The data confirm the government’s recent approach to “a new strategy of several important axes, namely the development of the private sector and facilitate the entry of companies to the market and the inclusion of all employees in the Pension Fund and the legislation of sponsored laws, as well as soft loans to industrial companies and services, commercial and agricultural.
Non-oil imports, particularly from the industrial and agricultural sectors, are no longer a small percentage of GDP, with the volume of government expenditures increasing until it consumes all the country’s oil imports.
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