Comments (0) 
By John Lee.
Iraq’s Council of Ministers has ruled that the Ministry of Oil is to supply the owners of private electricity generators with fuel from 1st June to 30th September.
Owners will receive 30 litres of gasoil per KVA of generator capacity each month.
(Source: AIN)
The Iraq Britain Business Council (IBBC) has welcomed a new initiative to boost the Iraqi jobs market.
A weekend conference in Basrah – sponsored by the Ministry of Oil and supported by Shell – has been investigating how to revitalise the Iraqi private sector by ensuring contracts with oil majors went to local firms.
Oil Minister Dr AbdulKarim al-Louaibi [Abdul Kareem Luaibi, Elaibi] said expanding the Iraqi private sector was an absolute priority to lift local companies up to international standards. “This is a new beginning, ” he said.
Basrah Governor Dr Khalaf al-Khalaf emphasised the need for the involvement of private companies which would expand economic growth in the region. He noted lack of skilled local manpower and low grade industrial equipment in Basrah which has a population of 3 million, but he said: “These obstacles must be overcome. ”
And another conference speaker Baroness Nicholson, Executive Chairman of the Iraq Britain Business Council added:
“Unemployment in Iraq is unacceptably high and it is absolutely vital jobs go to the local private sector. I know our members working in Iraq are fully committed to this principle. This is the first conference of its kind and follow up is essential. “
Chairman of Shell’s companies in Iraq, Hans Nijkamp said Shell was totally committed to developing local private industries and described the conference as: “a landmark event.”
He went on:
“It is time local companies were involved and we have to find out a way of structuring Iraqi companies into the system. We are very pleased to help the Ministry of Oil who are driving this with us. I hope this conference becomes an annual recurrence. The other international oil companies are going to get involved.
“It is the private sector which builds our oil and gas projects. As an IOC you have a choice. You can bring in a lot of international companies to build the project or you can make the efforts and the choices and do the hard work which is necessary to ensure it is local Iraqis as much a possible. I think we have a responsibility in that respect and I think the other IOC’s should think about it in the same way.
“If Shell is not relevant to Iraq we have no reason to be here.“
Shell already employs thousands of local people especially in ancillary work like construction. It has also shown a commitment to the local community by building roads, schools and housing and supporting local charities such as the AMAR Foundation.
* Dr Al-Louaibi said Iraq will spend US$ 130 billion on the country’s upstream sector up to 2017 to help raise production capacity to 9 million barrels a day. He also said the country will allocate $ US18 billion to raise natural gas output and US$ 25 billion to expand refinery capacity. Iraq forecasts US$ 600 billion in revenue from the oil expansion.
Al-Louaibi added oil exports in February reached 2.54 million barrels a day. Production from Iraq’s Majnoon oilfield will reach 100,000 barrels a day in May 2013 and 200,000 daily by the end of the year, he said.
Delegates also heard Shell plans to spend US $ 1billon developing Al Majnoon.
* Two car bombs rocked Basrah region the day after the conference. One ripped through a bus station at Garmat Ali 11 miles north of Basrah killing at least 10. The other was near South Oil headquarters in Basrah city and injured 2.
(Source: IBBC)
Private Prisons: The More Americans They Put Behind Bars The More Money They Make
By: Michael – The Economic Collapse (sent by Invictus) on: 13.03.2013 [19:37 ] (27 reads)
One of the keys to success in the private prison business it to get politicians to vote your way. That is why the big private prison companies spend so much money on lobbying and campaign contributions. The following is an excerpt from a report put out by the Justice Policy Institute entitled “Gaming the System: How the Political Strategies of Private Prison Companies Promote Ineffective Incarceration Policies”…
For-profit private prison companies primarily use three strategies to influence policy: lobbying, direct campaign contributions, and building relationships, networks, and associations.
Over the years, these political strategies have allowed private prison companies to promote policies that lead to higher rates of incarceration and thus greater profit margins for their company. In particular, private prison companies have had either influence over or helped to draft model legislation such as “three-strikes” and “truth-in-sentencing” laws, both of which have driven up incarceration rates and ultimately created more opportunities for private prison companies to bid on contracts to increase revenues.
If you can believe it, three of the largest private prison companies have spent approximately $ 45,000,000 combined on lobbying and campaign contributions over the past decade.
Would they be spending so much money if those companies did not believe that it was getting results?
Just look at what has happened to the U.S. prison population over the past several decades. Prior to 1980, there were virtually no private prisons in the United States. But since that time, we have seen the overall prison population and the private prison population absolutely explode.
For example, between 1990 and 2009 the number of Americans in private prisons grew by about 1600 percent.
Overall, the U.S. prison population more than quadrupled between 1980 and 2007.
So something has definitely changed.
Not that it is wrong to put people in prison when they commit crimes. Of course not. And right now violent crime is rapidly rising in many of our largest cities. When people commit violent crimes they need to be removed from the streets.
But when you put those criminals into the hands of private companies that are just in it to make a buck, the potential for abuse is enormous.
For example, when auditors visited one private prison in Texas, they “got so much fecal matter on their shoes they had to wipe their feet on the grass outside.”
The prisoners were literally living in their own manure.
How would you feel if a member of your own family was locked up in such a facility?
And the truth is that there seem to be endless stories of abuse in private prisons. One private prison company reportedly charges inmates $ 5.00 a minute to make phone calls but only pays them $ 1.00 a day to work…
Last year the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the nation’s largest private prison company, received $ 74 million of taxpayers’ money to run immigration detention centers. Their largest facility in Lumpkin, Georgia, receives $ 200 a night for each of the 2,000 detainees it holds, and rakes in yearly profits between $ 35 million and $ 50 million.
Prisoners held in this remote facility depend on the prison’s phones to communicate with their lawyers and loved ones. Exploiting inmates’ need, CCA charges detainees here $ 5 per minute to make phone calls. Yet the prison only pays inmates who work at the facility $ 1 a day. At that rate, it would take five days to pay for just one minute.
Speaking of work, private prisons have found that exploiting their inmates as a source of slave labor can be extraordinarily profitable. Today, private prisons are stealing jobs from ordinary American workers in a whole host of industries. The following is from an article by Vicky Pelaez…
According to the Left Business Observer, the federal prison industry produces 100% of all military helmets, ammunition belts, bullet-proof vests, ID tags, shirts, pants, tents, bags, and canteens. Along with war supplies, prison workers supply 98% of the entire market for equipment assembly services; 93% of paints and paintbrushes; 92% of stove assembly; 46% of body armor; 36% of home appliances; 30% of headphones/microphones/speakers; and 21% of office furniture. Airplane parts, medical supplies, and much more: prisoners are even raising seeing-eye dogs for blind people.
And many of the largest corporations in America have rushed in to take advantage of this pool of very cheap slave labor. Just check out some of the big names that have been exploiting prison labor…
At least 37 states have legalized the contracting of prison labor by private corporations that mount their operations inside state prisons. The list of such companies contains the cream of U.S. corporate society: IBM, Boeing, Motorola, Microsoft, AT&T, Wireless, Texas Instrument, Dell, Compaq, Honeywell, Hewlett-Packard, Nortel, Lucent Technologies, 3Com, Intel, Northern Telecom, TWA, Nordstrom’s, Revlon, Macy’s, Pierre Cardin, Target Stores, and many more. All of these businesses are excited about the economic boom generation by prison labor. Just between 1980 and 1994, profits went up from $ 392 million to $ 1.31 billion. Inmates in state penitentiaries generally receive the minimum wage for their work, but not all; in Colorado, they get about $ 2 per hour, well under the minimum. And in privately-run prisons, they receive as little as 17 cents per hour for a maximum of six hours a day, the equivalent of $ 20 per month. The highest-paying private prison is CCA in Tennessee, where prisoners receive 50 cents per hour for what they call “highly skilled positions.” At those rates, it is no surprise that inmates find the pay in federal prisons to be very generous. There, they can earn $ 1.25 an hour and work eight hours a day, and sometimes overtime. They can send home $ 200-$ 300 per month.
But of course some of the biggest profits for private prisons come from detaining young people. Today, private prison companies operate more than 50 percent of all “youth correctional facilities” in the United States.
And sometimes judges have even been bribed by these companies to sentence kids to very harsh sentences and to send them to their facilities. The following is from a report about two judges in Pennsylvania that were recently convicted for taking money to send kids to private prisons…
Michael Conahan, a former jurist in Luzerne County, was sentenced on Friday to 210 months in custody by Senior U.S. District Court Judge Edwin M. Kosik II. Conahan was also ordered to pay $ 874,000 in restitution. … As Main Justice reported in August, Ciavarella, former president judge of the Court of Common Pleas and former judge of the Juvenile Court for Luzerne County, was sentenced to 28 years in prison and ordered to make restitution of $ 965,930. …
Conahan’s role in the “cash for kids” scheme was to order the closing of a county-run detention center, clearing the way for Ciavarella, once known as a strict “law and order” judge, to send young offenders to private facilities. This arrangement worked out well for Ciavarella and Conahan, as well as the builder of the facilities and a developer, who pleaded guilty to lesser charges.
The arrangement didn’t work out so well for the young offenders, some of them sent away for offenses that were little more than pranks and would have merited probation, or perhaps just scoldings, if the judges had tried to live up to their oaths.
Are you starting to see why private prisons are such a problem?
Hundreds of kids had their lives permanently altered by those corrupt judges.
When you allow people to make money by locking other people up in cages, you are just asking for trouble.
The more Americans they put behind bars, the more money these private prisons make. It is a system that needs to be brought to an end.
So what do you think?
Do you believe that private prisons are a good idea or a bad idea?
Please feel free to post a comment with your thoughts below…
h ttp://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/private-prisons-the-more-americans-they-put-behind-bars-the-more-money-they-make
By Omar al-Shaher, for Al-Monitor. Any opinions expressed are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Iraq Business News.
Privately held Iraqi banks have almost entirely relinquished their traditional functions — such as giving out loans, lending credit and issuing letters of credit — due to default risks. Instead, they are resorting to profit making through participation in the currency auction regularly held by the Iraqi Central Bank.
Iraqi banks demand exaggerated guarantees for the granting of any loans to local investors, for fear of defaults on payments. According to banking experts, the value of some loans does not cover more than 40% of the guarantees the privately held banks are demanding, leading to a decrease in the number of loan operations conducted by these banks to a bare minimum.
A lack of local confidence in privately held banks has contributed to their reluctance to enter the market. According to banking expert Dr. Ahmad Brayhi, “Members of the public are depositing their money in government owned banks because they feel that they will honor their commitments towards them.” He also added, “The public does not have much confidence in local banks, which is why it does not trust them with its money.”
Bank brokers affirm that most privately held banks have either closed — or chosen not to open — branches in Iraqi provinces and restrict their activities to their main branches in Baghdad, due to a reluctance to engage in real banking transactions.
Out of a total of 23 privately held banks operating in Iraq, only two are located in the city of Erbil and one in Mosul, whereas 20 are located in Baghdad.
By John Lee.
Dubai’s overall exports and re-exports from the private sector to Iraq rose by more 350 percent to value $ 11.4bn in 2012, according to data from the Dubai Chamber.
Trade with Libya was up by 300 percent, while trade with Turkey doubled.
The Chamber’s director general, Hamad Buamim, said Dubai accounts for 75 percent of the UAE’s private-sector trade. Around 70 percent of goods imported into the emirate are re-exported.
(Source: Arabian Business)
(Picture: Hamad Buamim, Director General, Dubai Chamber)
By John Lee.
Twenty-two of Iraq’s 30 private banks made a combined profit of $ 366 million (427 billion Iraqi dinars) during the first nine months of the year, according to a study released by the Association of Private Banks in Iraq.
Al-Hayat newspaper says this is a 90 percent increase in profits over the same period in 2011.
North Bank for Finance and Investment topped the list with a profit of 105 billion dinars, followed by the United Bank for Investment with 75.1 billion dinars, and the Bank of Kurdistan with 52.2 billion dinars.
Munther Kaftan, the managing director of North Bank, said he experts to merge the weaker banks together in order to improve their capabilities and offerings, allowing them to develop into more modern institutions.
(Sources: Aswat al-Iraq, Nuqudy)
By John Lee.
Mawtani reports that the Iraqi government has approved the construction of a private free-trade zone south of Baghdad.
Sabah al-Qaisi (pictured), the chairman of the Ministry of Finance’s General Commission for Free Zones, told Mawtani:
“[The Ministry of Finance's General Commission for Free Zones] approved two requests submitted by a group of local investors to set up a private free-trade zone on an area of no less than five dunams (12,500 square metres) in the area of Uwaireej, south of Baghdad, to be used for commercial activities.“
This investment project will be the first of its kind in the country, as no free-trade zone area was ever set up by the private sector before, but the commission is about to approve two other private free zones, one in Sulaimaniya, and the other in Dohuk, near the Ibrahim al-Khalil crossing with Turkey.
Iraq already has three main free-trade zones belonging to the public sector, located in Khor al-Zubair in Basra, Flaifel in Ninawa province, and another in al-Qaim, Anbar province.
“We set a condition that all investors must hire 50% of [the workers needed from] local manpower,” al-Qaisi said, adding that it is important to “diversify sources of funding and to avoid total reliance on oil as the sole source of financial revenue”.
(Source: Mawtani)
By John Lee.
Mawtani reports that the Iraqi government has approved the construction of a private free-trade zone south of Baghdad.
Sabah al-Qaisi (pictured), the chairman of the Ministry of Finance’s General Commission for Free Zones, told Mawtani:
“[The Ministry of Finance's General Commission for Free Zones] approved two requests submitted by a group of local investors to set up a private free-trade zone on an area of no less than five dunams (12,500 square metres) in the area of Uwaireej, south of Baghdad, to be used for commercial activities.“
This investment project will be the first of its kind in the country, as no free-trade zone area was ever set up by the private sector before, but the commission is about to approve two other private free zones, one in Sulaimaniya, and the other in Dohuk, near the Ibrahim al-Khalil crossing with Turkey.
Iraq already has three main free-trade zones belonging to the public sector, located in Khor al-Zubair in Basra, Flaifel in Ninawa province, and another in al-Qaim, Anbar province.
“We set a condition that all investors must hire 50% of [the workers needed from] local manpower,” al-Qaisi said, adding that it is important to “diversify sources of funding and to avoid total reliance on oil as the sole source of financial revenue”.
(Source: Mawtani)
By John Lee.
Mawtani reports that the Iraqi government has approved the construction of a private free-trade zone south of Baghdad.
Sabah al-Qaisi (pictured), the chairman of the Ministry of Finance’s General Commission for Free Zones, told Mawtani:
“[The Ministry of Finance's General Commission for Free Zones] approved two requests submitted by a group of local investors to set up a private free-trade zone on an area of no less than five dunams (12,500 square metres) in the area of Uwaireej, south of Baghdad, to be used for commercial activities.“
This investment project will be the first of its kind in the country, as no free-trade zone area was ever set up by the private sector before, but the commission is about to approve two other private free zones, one in Sulaimaniya, and the other in Dohuk, near the Ibrahim al-Khalil crossing with Turkey.
Iraq already has three main free-trade zones belonging to the public sector, located in Khor al-Zubair in Basra, Flaifel in Ninawa province, and another in al-Qaim, Anbar province.
“We set a condition that all investors must hire 50% of [the workers needed from] local manpower,” al-Qaisi said, adding that it is important to “diversify sources of funding and to avoid total reliance on oil as the sole source of financial revenue”.
(Source: Mawtani)
More than $ 224 million has been injected into Iraq’s private sector economy in the form of Small & Medium Enterprise bank loans thanks to a cooperative effort between the USAID-Tijara Provincial Economic Growth Program and 12 private commercial banks. Of this amount, around $ 113 million presently is in circulation helping business owners expand their companies and create new jobs.
Prior to 2008, there was little SME bank lending in Iraq. As recently as December 2008, USAID-Tijara partner banks reported only $ 5 million worth of disbursements with $ 3 million of that sum outstanding.
Today, USAID-Tijara private partner banks have $ 113 million worth of SME loans circulating throughout Iraq. Nationwide, that total climbs to $ 650 million when total bank SME loans unreported to USAID-Tijara are added. This increase in SME lending shows that Iraqi banks regard small and medium-sized businesses as good customers and vital community assets.
SME loans are a recognized driver of job growth. According to bank records, borrowers receiving SME loans hired 21,000 new employees when they expanded their businesses.
Four years ago, many SME loans were guaranteed or subsidized by non-banking financial institutions such as the Iraqi Company for Bank Guarantees and the Iraqi Company for Financing SMEs. Today, over 56% of the SME loans made by USAID-Tijara’s partner bank were made with the banks’ own money.
One indication that SME loans are becoming a permanent part of Iraq’s commercial financing is the fact that 63% of the disbursed SME loans reported to USAID-Tijara have been made over the past 20 months. Indeed, of the 12,535 SME bank loans reported over the past four and a half years, two out of three, or 67%, are currently outstanding.
The accelerating rate of SME lending by Iraq’s private commercial banking sector is a major contributor to the economic revitalization in Iraq, says Adnan Chalabi, Director General of the Bank of Baghdad and chairman of the Iraqi Private Banks League. “Growth outside of the oil sector depends squarely on growing business at all levels,” he notes. “Small and medium enterprise financing is a dynamic force that directly improves Iraq’s economic well being.”
For additional information on banks that have SME lending programs please visit www.ipbl-iraq.org.
(Source: USAID-Tijara)
