Uppgangur í Írak

Það er ekki hægt að segja að jákvæðar fréttir frá Írak hafi tröllriðið fjölmiðlum undanfarin ár og misseri.  Landið virðist vera í kaldakoli og engar líkur á því að ástandið fari batnandi á næstunni.

Á föstudaginn las ég hinsvegar dálk í Globe and Mail sem fjallaði um efnahaginn hjá Írökum.  Eins og kemur fram í dálkinum gerir uppgangur í efnahagslífinu hörmungarnar í landinu ekki bærilegri, uppgangur í efnahagslífinu dregur ekki úr hörmungunum sem dynja þar á almenningi daglega, en uppgangurinn sýnir að stærstur hluti íbúanna styður engan stríðsaðilann, heldur vill lifa lífinu og byggja upp landið, auðga líf sitt og meðborgara sinna. 

En það gladdi mig, alla vegna um stund, að lesa jákvæðar fréttir frá Írak.

En smá brot úr dálkinum í Globe and Mail, sem er ritaður af Neil Reynolds:

"Retail and wholesale trade sectors are thriving. Real estate prices are soaring -- up by several hundred per cent in the past couple of years. Iraqi oil production (at two million barrels a day) approaches Venezuelan production (2.4 million barrels a day) and could easily double in the next few years. On average, Iraqis earn 100 per cent more, in real terms, than they did under Saddam Hussein.

Public opinion surveys indicate that Iraqis are now, in economic expectations, at least, expansively optimistic."

"None of this lessens the horrors of the savage insurgency in the infamous Sunni Triangle. But none of it warrants suppression of Iraq's economic boom, either, yet it remains an "invisible" story, as Newsweek puts it, in most international coverage. Take unemployment as a single example. Are Iraqis underemployed? Inefficiently employed? Dangerously employed? Absolutely. But are 50 per cent of Iraqis unemployed -- or indeed, as some reports have it, 70 per cent? Newsweek itself says that Iraq's unemployment rate "runs between 30 per cent and 50 per cent." Yet this kind of guesswork was disproved in mid-2005 when a comprehensive research study, using International Labour Organization definitions and standards, put Iraq's unemployment rate at 10.1 per cent.

In an assessment of Iraqi unemployment for the U.S. Congress, Rand Corporation researchers declared that bloated estimates of Iraqi unemployment were "seriously flawed," that the country possessed "an economically active, albeit poor, male citizenry." The report calculated the labour force participation rate for Iraqi men at 69 per cent. (By comparison, the rate for Canadian men is 73 per cent.) The participation rate for Iraqi women, however, was 13 per cent -- a similar percentage, the report noted, "to the participation rate [for women] in all of the Arab countries of the Middle East and North Africa."

Contrary to the TV image of Iraqis men loitering around the wreckage of bombed cars, the Rand report described an enterprising people with an almost heroic work ethic. By far, it observed, most Iraqis were self-employed in private sector work, many holding more than one job. "The problem in Iraq isn't unemployment," the report said. "It's poverty." "

"Iraqi government, which has endeavoured, slowly and awkwardly, to liberate the country's highly centralized, bureaucracy-bound economy. (The ousted Baathists -- Arabic for "Resurrectionists" -- were, after all, national socialists.) Among all these liberal, market-driven reforms, the most important has been Iraq's cautious momentum toward world market prices for gasoline and diesel fuel.

A year ago, Iraq still sold gasoline to Iraqis for a penny a litre. Smuggled into Turkey, the penny-worth of gas became an asset worth a dollar, producing a hundredfold return. The long lineups for gas across Iraq became an apparently permanent symbol of the country's inability to pump enough gas for its own consumption. By some estimates, the gas price subsidy, along with the corruption it induced, cost Iraq as much as 40 per cent of its oil production and more than 10 per cent of its entire GDP. But criminal profits, as much as righteous profits, can drive economic growth.

Iraq now has its domestic gas price up to 14 cents a litre. It still has a way to go."

Dálkinn má finna hér.

Þar sem vitnað var til greinar í Newsweek, þá leitaði ég hana uppi á vefnum. 

Í greininni í Newsweek mátti meðal annars lesa eftirfarandi:

"In what might be called the mother of all surprises, Iraq's economy is growing strong, even booming in places."

"It may sound unreal, given the daily images of carnage and chaos. But for a certain plucky breed of businessmen, there's good money to be made in Iraq. Consider Iraqna, the leading mobile-phone company. For sure, its quarterly reports seldom make for dull reading. Despite employees kidnapped, cell-phone towers bombed, storefronts shot up and a huge security budget—up to four guards for each employee—the company posted revenues of $333 million in 2005. This year, it's on track to take in $520 million. The U.S. State Department reports that there are now 7.1 million mobile-phone subscribers in Iraq, up from just 1.4 million two years ago. Says Wael Ziada, an analyst in Cairo who tracks Iraqna: "There will always be pockets of money and wealth, no matter how bad the situation gets."

"Civil war or not, Iraq has an economy, and—mother of all surprises—it's doing remarkably well. Real estate is booming. Construction, retail and wholesale trade sectors are healthy, too, according to a report by Global Insight in London. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce reports 34,000 registered companies in Iraq, up from 8,000 three years ago. Sales of secondhand cars, televisions and mobile phones have all risen sharply. Estimates vary, but one from Global Insight puts GDP growth at 17 percent last year and projects 13 percent for 2006. The World Bank has it lower: at 4 percent this year. But, given all the attention paid to deteriorating security, the startling fact is that Iraq is growing at all.

How? Iraq is a crippled nation growing on the financial equivalent of steroids, with money pouring in from abroad. National oil revenues and foreign grants look set to total $41 billion this year, according to the IMF. With security improving in one key spot—the southern oilfields—that figure could go up.

Not too shabby, all things considered. Yes, Iraq's problems are daunting, to say the least. Unemployment runs between 30 and 50 percent. Many former state industries have all but ceased to function. As for all that money flowing in, much of it has gone to things that do little to advance the country's future. Security, for instance, gobbles up as much as a third of most companies' operating budgets, whereas what Iraq really needs are hospitals, highways and power-generating plants.

Even so, there's a vibrancy at the grass roots that is invisible in most international coverage of Iraq. Partly it's the trickle-down effect. However it's spent, whether on security or something else, money circulates. Nor are ordinary Iraqis themselves short on cash. After so many years of living under sanctions, with little to consume, many built up considerable nest eggs—which they are now spending. That's boosted economic activity, particularly in retail. Imported goods have grown increasingly affordable, thanks to the elimination of tariffs and trade barriers. Salaries have gone up more than 100 percent since the fall of Saddam, and income-tax cuts (from 45 percent to just 15 percent) have put more cash in Iraqi pockets. "The U.S. wanted to create the conditions in which small-scale private enterprise could blossom," says Jan Randolph, head of sovereign risk at Global Insight. "In a sense, they've succeeded.""

" A government often accused of being no government at all has somehow managed to take its first steps to liberalize the highly centralized economy of the Saddam era. Iraq has a debt-relief deal with the IMF that requires Baghdad to end subsidies and open up its gas-import market. Earlier this year the government made the first hesitant steps, axing fuel subsidies—and sending prices from a few cents a liter to around 14. "This has become one important way of institutionally engaging with Iraq," says economist Colin Rowat at the University of Birmingham. "If you lose that engagement, then that means a lot more people have given up on Iraq."

It goes without saying: real progress won't be seen until the security situation clears up. Iraq still lacks a functioning banking system. Though there's an increasing awareness of Iraq as a potential emerging market, foreign investors won't make serious commitments until they are assured a measure of stability. Local moneymen are scarcely more bullish on the long term. In Iraq's nascent bond market, buyers have so far been willing to invest in local-currency Treasury bills with terms up to six months, max."

Greinina í heild má finna hér. 

 

Athugasemdir

[óskráður (IP-tala skráð) 14.1.2007 kl. 21:36]

Menn mættu gera meira af því að sýna góðar fréttir frá Írak, en ekki iðulega vera að einbeita sér að þeim slæmu. Það hefur verið fjallað um þessa grein í Newsweek áður þó, hér er lítil frétt hvar vísað er í greinina:

http://frelsi.is/vettvangur/nr/4163

Svo er auðvitað spurning hvort það séu ekki góðar fréttir að Bandaríkjamenn ætli að leggja meira á sig til að friða Bagdad.