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Butifldrm

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  1. Maliki expects decrease in Iraq 2012 revenues

    in Iraq & Dinar Related News

    Posted

    Maliki expects decrease in Iraq 2012 revenues

    Saturday, October 29, 2011 13:10 GMT

    Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki said he expects a decrease in Iraqi revenues in 2012. An economic world crisis in Europe and the US will damage Iraq’s economy, Maliki indicated while affirming that electricity and oil sectors will make progress in the upcoming year.

    “The financial situation is not promising,” Maliki said during a visit to Babel Province. “We raised the State’s budget to 136 trillion Dinars but we could be facing a potential new economic world crisis in Europe and the US,” he revealed.

    “The crisis will cause an economic freeze that will affect Iraq since 90% of its budget relies on oil incomes,” he pointed out.

    “As soon as companies working hard in all Iraqi regions deliver their projects in the electricity sector, 13 thousand megawatts of electricity will be produced and distributed in the country starting next summer and until two years,” Maliki assured. “Oil production is increasing. And we plan to inaugurate at the end of this year export stations producing 900 thousand barrels that will be followed by other export stations producing another 900 thousand barrels in the first quarter of next year,” he concluded.

    http://www.alsumaria.tv/en/Economics-News-Iraq/3-70116-Maliki-expects-decrease-in-Iraq-2012-revenues.html

  2. Broadwell: As we leave Iraq, questions loom

    in Off Topic posts

    Posted

    Broadwell: As we leave Iraq, questions loom>

    Charles Broadwell

    If I'm a Fort Bragg soldier who has served a tour or two or five in Iraq, I wonder how I'll feel on New Year's Day, 2012.

    That's the day after the last of our 39,000 troops and thousands of pieces of military equipment are supposed to be out of the country. It will mark the end of a monumental U.S. military effort and a new era for the citizens of Iraq.

    That's the plan, at least.

    As a soldier, then, I wonder how much I will care. On the one hand, it will be over; cross it off and move on, preferably back home. We'll still have Afghanistan to wrestle with, but no more Baghdad, Fallujah, places like that.

    Nearly nine years of war have exacted an awful toll, including almost 4,500 U.S. troops killed. Other numbers are less exact but no less staggering: 30,000 or more American casualties, 100,000 or more Iraqi civilian deaths, $750 billion or more in U.S. expenses, and still rising.

    As this newspaper has reported, the toll will continue to mount as some veterans struggle with the return to home life from what they've experienced over there.

    So how do you feel, as of Dec. 31, to see the United States turning the security reins over to the Iraqis and essentially washing our hands of it, at least in terms of military control?

    You can argue about the decision to go to war and the handling of the aftermath. That argument won't end with 2011.

    But if you've been a soldier on the ground and seen the blood spilled, whether by friend or foe, and seen our efforts to rebuild this country from the chaos, do you wonder about this total pullout? Do you worry whether the factions can hold together or if it will all spin out of control? Do you worry about our Kurdish allies in the north and whether they will push for independence and draw into conflict with Turkey? And what of the Iranians, always lurking as a threat to Iraq and the rest of the Middle East?

    So many questions. As a soldier, will you be able to look back someday and see that it was worth it?

    History will judge, as they say. As of Dec. 31, we'll just have to hope for the best.

    http://www.fayobserver.com/articles/2011/10/29/1132819?sac=Local

    • Upvote 2

  3. U.S. Is Planning Buildup in Gulf After Iraq Exit

    in Iraq & Dinar Related News

    Posted

    MacDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. — The Obama administration plans to bolster the American military presence in the Persian Gulf after it withdraws the remaining troops from Iraq this year, according to officials and diplomats. That repositioning could include new combat forces in Kuwait able to respond to a collapse of security in Iraq or a military confrontation with Iran.

    The plans, under discussion for months, gained new urgency after President Obama’s announcement this month that the last American soldiers would be brought home from Iraq by the end of December. Ending the eight-year war was a central pledge of his presidential campaign, but American military officers and diplomats, as well as officials of several countries in the region, worry that the withdrawal could leave instability or worse in its wake.

    After unsuccessfully pressing both the Obama administration and the Iraqi government to permit as many as 20,000 American troops to remain in Iraq beyond 2011, the Pentagon is now drawing up an alternative.

    In addition to negotiations over maintaining a ground combat presence in Kuwait, the United States is considering sending more naval warships through international waters in the region.

    With an eye on the threat of a belligerent Iran, the administration is also seeking to expand military ties with the six nations in the Gulf Cooperation Council — Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. While the United States has close bilateral military relationships with each, the administration and the military are trying to foster a new “security architecture” for the Persian Gulf that would integrate air and naval patrols and missile defense.

    The size of the standby American combat force to be based in Kuwait remains the subject of negotiations, with an answer expected in coming days. Officers at the Central Command headquarters here declined to discuss specifics of the proposals, but it was clear that successful deployment plans from past decades could be incorporated into plans for a post-Iraq footprint in the region.

    For example, in the time between the Persian Gulf war in 1991 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the United States Army kept at least a combat battalion — and sometimes a full combat brigade — in Kuwait year-round, along with an enormous arsenal ready to be unpacked should even more troops have been called to the region.

    “Back to the future” is how Maj. Gen. Karl R. Horst, Central Command’s chief of staff, described planning for a new posture in the Gulf. He said the command was focusing on smaller but highly capable deployments and training partnerships with regional militaries. “We are kind of thinking of going back to the way it was before we had a big ‘boots on the ground’ presence,” General Horst said. “I think it is healthy. I think it is efficient. I think it is practical.”

    Mr. Obama and his senior national security advisers have sought to reassure allies and answer critics, including many Republicans, that the United States will not abandon its commitments in the Persian Gulf even as it winds down the war in Iraq and looks ahead to doing the same in Afghanistan by the end of 2014.

    “We will have a robust continuing presence throughout the region, which is proof of our ongoing commitment to Iraq and to the future of that region, which holds such promise and should be freed from outside interference to continue on a pathway to democracy,” Secretary of State Hillarious Rodham Clinton said in Tajikistan after the president’s announcement.

    During town-hall-style meetings with military personnel in Asia last week, the secretary of defense, Leon E. Panetta, noted that the United States had 40,000 troops in the region, including 23,000 in Kuwait, though the bulk of those serve as logistical support for the forces in Iraq.

    As they undertake this effort, the Pentagon and its Central Command, which oversees operations in the region, have begun a significant rearrangement of American forces, acutely aware of the political and budgetary constraints facing the United States, including at least $450 billion of cuts in military spending over the next decade as part of the agreement to reduce the budget deficit.

    Officers at Central Command said that the post-Iraq era required them to seek more efficient ways to deploy forces and maximize cooperation with regional partners. One significant outcome of the coming cuts, officials said, could be a steep decrease in the number of intelligence analysts assigned to the region. At the same time, officers hope to expand security relationships in the region. General Horst said that training exercises were “a sign of commitment to presence, a sign of commitment of resources, and a sign of commitment in building partner capability and partner capacity.”

    Col. John G. Worman, Central Command’s chief for exercises, noted a Persian Gulf milestone: For the first time, he said, the military of Iraq had been invited to participate in a regional exercise in Jordan next year, called Eager Lion 12, built around the threat of guerrilla warfare and terrorism.

    Related

    News Analysis: U.S. Scales Back Diplomacy in Iraq Amid Fiscal and Security Concerns (October 23, 2011)

    U.S. Troops to Leave Iraq by Year’s End, Obama Says (October 22, 2011)

    Despite Difficult Talks, U.S. and Iraq Had Expected Some American Troops to Stay (October 22, 2011)

    Times Topic: Iraq

    Connect With Us on Twitter

    Follow @nytimesworld for international breaking news and headlines.

    Another part of the administration’s post-Iraq planning involves the Gulf Cooperation Council, dominated by Saudi Arabia. It has increasingly sought to exert its diplomatic and military influence in the region and beyond. Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, for example, sent combat aircraft to the Mediterranean as part of the NATO-led intervention in Libya, while Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates each have forces in Afghanistan.

    At the same time, however, the council sent a mostly Saudi ground force into Bahrain to support that government’s suppression of demonstrations this year, despite international criticism.

    Despite such concerns, the administration has proposed establishing a stronger, multilateral security alliance with the six nations and the United States. Mr. Panetta and Mrs. Clinton outlined the proposal in an unusual joint meeting with the council on the sidelines of the United Nations in New York last month.

    The proposal still requires the approval of the council, whose leaders will meet again in December in the Saudi capital, Riyadh, and the kind of multilateral collaboration that the administration envisions must overcome rivalries among the six nations.

    “It’s not going to be a NATO tomorrow,” said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic negotiations still under way, “but the idea is to move to a more integrated effort.”

    Iran, as it has been for more than three decades, remains the most worrisome threat to many of those nations, as well as to Iraq itself, where it has re-established political, cultural and economic ties, even as it provided covert support for Shiite insurgents who have battled American forces.

    “They’re worried that the American withdrawal will leave a vacuum, that their being close by will always make anyone think twice before taking any action,” Bahrain’s foreign minister, Sheik Khalid bin Ahmed al-Khalifa, said in an interview, referring to officials in the Persian Gulf region.

    Sheik Khalid was in Washington last week for meetings with the administration and Congress. “There’s no doubt it will create a vacuum,” he said, “and it may invite regional powers to exert more overt action in Iraq.”

    He added that the administration’s proposal to expand its security relationship with the Persian Gulf nations would not “replace what’s going on in Iraq” but was required in the wake of the withdrawal to demonstrate a unified defense in a dangerous region. “Now the game is different,” he said. “We’ll have to be partners in operations, in issues and in many ways that we should work together.”

    At home, Iraq has long been a matter of intense dispute. Some foreign policy analysts and Democrats — and a few Republicans — say the United States has remained in Iraq for too long. Others, including many Republicans and military analysts, have criticized Mr. Obama’s announcement of a final withdrawal, expressing fear that Iraq remained too weak and unstable.

    “The U.S. will have to come to terms with an Iraq that is unable to defend itself for at least a decade,” Adam Mausner and Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies wrote after the withdrawal announcement.

    Twelve Republican Senators demanded hearings on the administration’s ending of negotiations with the Iraqis — for now at least — on the continuation of American training and on counterterrorism efforts in Iraq.

    “As you know, the complete withdrawal of our forces from Iraq is likely to be viewed as a strategic victory by our enemies in the Middle East, especially the Iranian regime,” the senators wrote Wednesday in a letter to the chairman of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/world/middleeast/united-states-plans-post-iraq-troop-increase-in-persian-gulf.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

    • Upvote 2

  6. EU leaders Reach Deal

    in Dinar Rumors

    Posted

    If Iraq's foreign currency reserves are truly 45% Euro, a deal struck in the EU, would only help us with our investment and the financial future and stability for Iraq. Also, think about this. Could it be an EU deal was struck, because of the impending RV in Iraq. In other words, the EU banks may be holding IQD from a so called Currency Swap performed years ago. JMO, that's why it's in Rumors. Also, a few years ago, I remeber reading where all of the Paris Club countries except for Greece had forgive Iraq's debt. It's in IMF documents. I have tried to go back and research this again but have not had the time. The documents stated , that Greece had not forgiven Iraq's debt and needed parliamentry approval. Well at that time Greece was in tremendous trouble. I could not see them forgiving Iraq's debt. Maybe, and I know it's a far stretch, but the EU striking a deal and the good news coming from Iraq could very well be related. Like I said, "JMO"

    EU leaders reach debt deal

    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    Top story: In a significant step toward stemming the debt crisis in the euro zone, European leaders secured an agreement from banks to take a 50 percent loss on the value of their Greek debt. The plan is projected to bring Greece's debt down to 120 percent of its national GDP by 2020.

    The deal will also expand the EU bailout fund, known as the European Financial Stability Facility, by approximately $1.4 trillion, which is meant to provide relief for debt-strapped nations such as Italy and Spain. It also requires banks to boost their capital reserves by roughly $150 billion to protect against sovereign debt defaults.

    The need to design a new bailout package for the deteriorating Greek economy, which had fallen into recession due to austerity measures, was at the center of negotiations. European leaders hailed the agreement as a step toward resolving the debt crisis, and European markets also jumped significantly on news of the deal.

    China reins in liberalization: After long allowing some freedoms to flourish, Chinese authorities are reportedly restricting long-tolerated forms of expression.

    http://globalnews.foreignpolicy.com/

    Iraq depends on oil revenues for about 95 percent of its budget.

    September 07, 2011

    BAGHDAD — The Iraqi Central Bank has announced a large increase in the country’s foreign-currency reserves, RFE/RL’s Radio Free Iraq reports.

    Mudher Muhammad Salih, an adviser to Central Bank Governor Sinan al-Shabibi, told RFE/RL on September 6 that the bank’s reserves “are now at about $58 billion.”

    He said that was an increase from the $50 billion in foreign currency reserves it had at the end of 2010.

    Salih added that the bank had recently succeeded in controlling the inflation rate, which he said in recent years had increased at a high rate and was 7.1 percent in July.

    He said the Central Bank would continue to obtain different foreign currencies and increase its overall amount of foreign-currency reserves in order to protect the value of the Iraqi dinar, which he said was a “main goal” of the bank.

    Iraq’s foreign-currency reserves are 45 percent in dollars, 45 percent in euros, and 10 percent in British pounds.

    Iraq depends on oil revenues for about 95 percent of its budget and the increase in foreign-currency reserves thus far this year is due to higher world prices for oil. Iraq has earned some 34 percent more from oil through the first five months than it had budgeted.

    Economic experts welcomed the announcement about the country’s currency reserves but warned that the total was still not high enough.

    Iraqi economist Hilal al-Tahhan said the currency reserves should be roughly equivalent to Iraq’s annual budget, which is about $79.6 billion.

    Iraq’s Baghdad-based Central Bank, which is an independent institution, has branches in Basra, Sulaymaniah, Irbil, and Mosul.

    http://bit.ly/o8DKMe

    • Upvote 4
    • Downvote 1

  13. Economist: much talk about the deletion of zeros from the currency caused price instability

    in Iraq & Dinar Related News

    Posted

    Sara, this is a great article and may give much insight to economic conditions presently in Iraq. Hopefully the CBI will make their move. I know, I myself have invested in metals because of the uncertainty of the USD. I can only imagine how the Iraqi business men must feel. Hedging the little money they have, under conditions of such uncertainty only makes sense. IMO, with inflation climbing, the amount of information (disinformation) released from the CBI, Iraq's present economic policy is on a slippery slope.

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