Dubai: With their economic and security conditions improving, government officials in Iraq will be in Dubai next month to tackle opportunities for doing business and investing in the war-ravaged country.
Organisers of the Iraq Finance Conference said there are a number of opportunities in Iraq for investment banks, retail banks, insurance companies and other financial institutions. They said the country now proves lucrative for investments in real estate, oil and gas and electricity sectors.
Iraq is facing a huge housing shortage, with nearly two million residential units needed to be built. Some $860 million (Dh3.1 billion) has already been allocated for the construction of low-cost homes in 2014 alone, and more investments are required to put in place new infrastructure, including roads, railways, bridges and expressways.
Iraq’s gross domestic product (GDP) posted a growth of 10.2 per cent last 2012, the highest in emerging markets, and the IMF is forecasting the country’s real economic growth to reach 14.7 per cent this year and an average of 10 per cent over the next five years. “This is markedly higher than the average for emerging markets and makes Iraq a fantastic destination for foreign direct investment,” a spokesperson for Symexco told Gulf News in an email. Led by British Iraqis, Symexco is organising the conference that will start on January 27, 2014.
Shailesh Dash, CEO of Al Masah Capital, said that while they welcome the positive developments in Iraq, a regional investor needs to first weigh his own risk/reward ratio of investing in the country versus investing in the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region.
“Opportunistic investors have been in Iraq for a number of years already,” noted Dash. “We do think, from an institutional point of view, a much longer, sustained level of local economic growth, without interruptions from political and security crises, and on legal and regulatory infrastructure that is more robust, is required before one should commit substantial foreign capital into the Iraqi economy,” he told Gulf News.
Gavin Wishart, chief executive officer of Standard Chartered Iraq, noted that the Iraqi economy is growing at a rapid pace and the oil revenues are expected to surge in the coming years. “[These] will bring significant benefits for the country,” he said.
