As we have previously indicated, privatization is not an aim, rather it is a means, or more accurately, it is one of the economic reform policies programs which aim at increasing levels of economic development and treat economic distortions that affect economic structures.

The Iraqi economy currently suffers severely dangerous ‎Structural disequilibrium as the Minister of Development Planning and Cooperation stated that the problems which the economy suffers from are getting worse and he described them as catastrophic. The Iraqi economy is exhausted with the burden of foreign debts, the increase of the national demand, and reduction in the national supply of goods especially that most of the Iraqi industries are incapable to compete due to many accumulated issues. All of this, lead to the collapse of the value of the Iraqi Dinar despite the successful financial and monetary policies and the legislations issued by the Iraqi government after the fall of the previous regime which gave the Central Bank necessary freedom to fight the rate of inflation. But the Iraqi Dinar’s value did not reach the required level due to the increased demand on the dollar to purchase foreign goods in order to fulfill the local need. This does not mean that those fiscal policies were failure, at the minimum, those policies contributed in increasing the value of the Iraqi Dinar to the determined level in addition to maintaining the stability of its value.

All of these problems which the Iraqi economy suffers from in addition to the rising rate of unemployment, corruption and mismanagement are warning of dangerous matters unless the government takes quick procedures to correct the Iraqi economy situation and follow quick economic reform policies.

Depending on petroleum revenues does not represent a radical or logical solution because history proved that depending on ‎Revenue - generating economy is catastrophic especially if we took into consideration the turnover in petroleum rates.

In spite of the currently high rate of petroleum which realizes large financial revenues but this increase has a negative effect on the long-term because it will urge the industrial countries, USA on top of them, to look for alternative energy sources. Searching for alternative energy sources became on the top priorities of the strategies of major countries’. It is also on the top priorities of the election campaigns of presidential candidates.

From here appears the need to implement economic reforms packages so as to lead to following economic, commercial, and fiscal policies in addition to setting up good foreign investment environment and factors in order to expand the national productive base, create variety in that base to cover the need of local demand and diversify the exports list so as to reduce dependence on petroleum revenues as a sole national income resource as the developing countries are strongly trending towards attracting direct and indirect foreign investments to implement the developmental process without exhausting its budget with new financial burdens.

Privatization takes the first place in those policies; especially knowing that the most important factors to implement the privatization policy (as many researchers believe) is the presence of a major economic crisis. This factor is already present in Iraq. Also, Iraq will be similar to the developing countries in pushing towards following the privatization policy in terms of the foreign factor represented in donating and in debt countries and agencies alike.

Therefore, based on our estimation, privatization policies are now considered the track that Iraq’s economy should go through.

From Dr. Nahro Mohammad Abdul Kareem’s book “Iraq on the path of correcting its track”, Pg. 116 – 117.