KTFA Members "Saturday Iraq News" 12-26-2020

KTFA:

Samson:  Al Rasheed Bank stops the deposits and withdrawals of saving accounts

26th December, 2020

Al-Rasheed Bank announced, on Saturday, that it will stop withdrawing and depositing savings accounts until January 3, due to the end of the fiscal year and for the purpose of implementation only.

The bank’s media office said in a statement received by Shafaq News that "the suspension includes saving accounts only and for the purposes of applying the accounts."

He added, "The bank's branches were instructed to deal with emergency withdrawals during the aforementioned period with appropriate flexibility."   LINK

Samson:  Parliamentary Finance announces the arrival of the budget bill to the House of Representatives

26th December, 2020

The Parliamentary Finance Committee announced, on Saturday, the arrival of the budget bill to the parliament.

A member of the committee, Ahmed Hama Rashid, said in a radio interview, "The budget bill has reached the inclusion of the House of Representatives, and according to the bylaws, it is read first, and then it is studied by the Finance Committee and a second reading is read."

He added, "After the second reading, the remarks of MPs and political blocs are taken," indicating that "the Finance Committee needs from 20 days to 30 days to approve the budget."    LINK

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Samson:  Parliamentary committee: 30% of the contents of the 2021 budget will be amended

16:00 - 24/12/2020

Member of the Parliament's Regions Committee, Mudar Al-Karawi, revealed, on Thursday, that 30% of the contents of the 2021 budget will be changed before voting on it.

Al-Karawi told Al-Maalouma that "the 2021 budget has many observations, especially with the increase in the exchange rate, fuel, and the reduction in employee allocations and other points," noting that "it is difficult to pass these points without valuable adjustments that contribute to supporting large segments of Iraqis who will be affected by them."

He added, "30% and perhaps more of the budget's contents will be amended in the House of Representatives, and there will be inclusion of alternatives proposed by the financial and economic committees to maximize non-oil revenues instead of government solutions," considering that "the budget is perhaps the most difficult in the history of the Iraqi state after 2003 due to the sensitivity of the situation." The economic and financial affliction that the country suffers due to years of accumulations and mistakes.

Al-Karawi pointed out to “the necessity of involving Iraqi economic competencies and even international centers in searching for ways out of the financial and economic crisis afflicting the country and ensuring that there is a national political framework supportive of decisions that save the country's economy and push it away from any severe crises and get rid of the crisis of complete dependence on oil revenues. As a major source of budget.   LINK

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Don961:   Financial crisis ... Fact or fabrication ?!

 SAT, 26-12-2020, AM 1:15  KARRAR AL-ASADI

Written by: Qassem Al-Ajrash

For the purpose of approaching any problem, and then trying to solve it, it is necessary to begin by describing it in a realistic and accurate manner, determining its size, anticipating the ceiling of its development, probing its temporal ranges, its potential effects, and its societal repercussions, and after that it is confronted with appropriate tools, and appropriate people are assigned to the confrontation, so that the treatments come smoothly. Realistic, not on the way the Iraqi state is facing the current complex crisis ...!

The state, with its legislative, executive, judicial and presidential elements, and with it the confused Iraqi media, did not reach the nature of the complex problem in which we found ourselves, so all the elements approached it, confused, confused and indiscriminate. actually; And because of the exacerbations of our complex crisis, the economic and social conditions in Iraq seem to go towards more complexity, so that difficult questions about the future of stability in the country have become proliferating, searching for those who understand them simply by understanding, after we despair of having someone to answer them!

We have not heard from the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance so far, what is the size of the monetary mass in circulation, and what is the amount of sums deposited in government banks, and the same in private banks, and the same in banks in the Kurdistan region; By citizens and companies, to clarify the size of the saved sums; By citizens in their places of residence..and on the basis of those numbers; Can we know the effects of the devaluation of the Iraqi dinar on the citizens.

In addition, even the blue jin does not know the amount of money saved by citizens in Iraqi dinars, in their homes or outside the banks. Rather, the governor of the Central Bank cannot measure the size of the Iraqi monetary mass, and he also does not know the amount of foreign exchange, and in whom ?!

The sin of the apparatus that manages our financial and economic affairs is that it has over-borrowed without heartache, and the state, due to the many factors that we know, such as corruption, waste and mismanagement of expenditures, accumulated billions of dollars of debt; Which these agencies cannot disclose, either because of the huge numbers, or because they do not know the size of the debt at all, and the Central Bank also played an important role in the growing volume of debt, by borrowing from banks at very high interest rates and lending to the government at much lower rates.

The calamity, which only a few have seen, is that the World Economic Bulletin, issued on 12/21/2020 in New York, revealed that the value of the Iraqi dinar was tampered with, and it was a major fraud by the Iraqi government, not to the global economy and global financial markets, that is. A role in reducing its market value, as it still maintains its value, which amounts to $ 100 = approximately 120,000 Iraqis, in all global financial markets.

The global bulletin said that the Iraqi dinar has not been devalued, and that what was issued by the Iraqi stock market lacks economic science and expertise.

Words before peace: We ended up with a very large stock of debt, which has become unsustainable, knowing that the problem of bad debts is that the creditors who lent money want to recover it, so we have to face reality, and accept that losses have occurred. Everyone accepts some concessions, until we find the most  reasonable and acceptable solution.  LINK

Samson:  Parliamentarian warns: The employee will lose 25% of his salary due to the devaluation of the dinar

26th December 2020
A member of the Parliamentary Oil and Energy Committee, Ibtisam Muhammad Darb revealed, on Saturday, that raising the dollar price will cause the employee to lose 25% of his salary, noting that this measure negatively affected financial transactions in all Iraqi governorates, including the Kurdistan region.

Darb said in an interview with Shafaq News, that "the high exchange rate of the dollar will lead to the employee losing 25% of his salary, in addition to the rise in the prices of goods and goods, which burdens the citizen twice." "The citizen is the only victim, but it is possible that the 2021 budget includes solutions to the economic crisis," she added.

Darb pointed out that "the decline in the value of the Iraqi dinar against the dollar will negatively affect not only the governorates of Iraq, but even between the Kurdistan Region and Baghdad as well," adding, "The citizen suffers mainly from the deterioration of the economic situation, and this crisis complements his suffering."

And on the negotiations between Baghdad and Erbil, Darb explained, "There are negotiations between the governments of Baghdad and the Kurdistan Region regarding the export of oil and its revenues, and these negotiations are still ongoing and have not reached an end despite the existence of preliminary understandings regarding the delivery of the region to at least 250 thousand barrels per day, to Baghdad." He pointed out that "the 2021 budget confirmed this amount, but there are several problems that have not been resolved so far, and negotiations between the parties are continuing, and no issue has been resolved in this particular file."

It is noteworthy that economists, MPs and traders warned of the negative repercussions on the low-income and poor due to the devaluation of the Iraqi dinar against the dollar, and since the Central Bank of Iraq announced the adoption of the new exchange rate for the dollar, several demonstrations condemned this measure.   LINK

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Samson:  Representative economy: 70% of the Iraqi people will be affected by the raising of the dollar and the 2021 budget

18:01 - 12/26/2020

The Parliamentary Economic and Investment Committee confirmed, on Saturday, that more than 70% of the Iraqi people from the poor and middle class will be affected by the government's measures to raise the dollar and draft the 2021 budget.

A member of the Economic Committee, Nada Shaker, told Al-Maalouma that "the government is supposed to send the draft budget for 2021 last October, but it sent it at the end of the year in a short time and full of errors."

She added that "more than 70% of the poor and middle class of the Iraqi people will be affected by the current crisis due to raise the price of the dollar and the budget of 2021," noting that "the budgets of Iraq's previous 70 trillion does not exceed dinars now that the parliament was surprised by the shadow of the financial and government crisis is the budget of 150 trillion Dinar".

Shaker explained that "the poor class of the people cannot be held responsible for financial mismanagement and financial corruption," stressing that "adjustments will be made to the budget and reduced to ensure that the salaries of employees are not compromised."  LINK

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Don961:  Iraq sends $ 50 billion annually abroad ... Reducing the dinar is an "opportunity" to solve the most important file through "two methods"

2020-12-26  Yes Iraq: Baghdad

 Iraq stands in front of a clear challenge, to take advantage of the step to reduce the value of the dinar against the dollar, to address the issue of imports that cause a drain in the country's hard currency abroad.

 The Parliamentary Services Committee announced today, Saturday, its intention to raise the slogan of the national product first during the next year, indicating that the high exchange rate of the dollar is a catalyst for reliance on the local product.

The head of the committee, Walid al-Sahlani, said in a press statement followed by "Yes Iraq", "The committee will raise the slogan of the national product first next year, because the economic situation that is going through Iraq, especially after the high exchange rate of the dollar, will give an incentive to adopt the local product, and its quality is a guarantor of the marketing ability for him".

He added that "the asphalt plants, the private sector and self-financing companies, especially the companies linked to the Ministry of Industry, need to support the government through loans, and the creation of an economic vision, in addition to the issue of employment."

He pointed out that “a lot of imported construction materials depend on the local consumer’s conviction with the quality of this foreign product, on the one hand, while the second side requires state institutions to set specific controls on the quality condition to promote local production,” demanding that “the local product is of high quality and within acceptable conditions. “.

He stressed "the importance of dealing with crises with proper management, to make great achievements, as there are aluminum and petrochemical plants and many stalled projects."

He pointed out that "disrupting projects is either unjustified or deliberate routine, so we notice strategic projects such as the petrochemical project, which is one of the important projects in Basra Governorate, which was supposed to employ hundreds of manpower, and the iron and steel project."

40-50 billion dollars sent outside Iraq

For his part, the economist Mustafa Jabbar Sanad revealed in a clarification that "Yis Iraq" saw, "Iraq imports goods between 40 to 50 billion dollars annually, and the largest countries from which it imports: - 1- Turkey, 2- China, 3- Iran, About 40 billion dollars.

He pointed out that "the most imported commodities are: foodstuffs, cars, medical materials, petroleum products, clothes, construction and electrical materials, telephones and accessories." Some cannot. ”

Solutions and Recommendations

Sanad issued several recommendations, including that “the state must grant investment opportunities diligently and aggressively to target the most important, most and most expensive import materials, for the private sector and investors, support them and remove them from the routine circle.

In addition to "concluding bilateral and quadruple agreements with the trading countries, to agree on a formula for the basket of currencies, and it is possible to benefit from the oil sold to China, which is estimated at 250 to 350 million barrels per year, to liquidate transactions and support the establishment of alternative import laboratories."  link

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Samson:  Security forces arrest a suicide bomber intending to blow himself up on New Year's Eve in Baghdad

26th December, 2020
The National Security Agency announced on Saturday that it had arrested a suicide bomber and three others who were preparing to carry out an attack during the New Year holidays in the Iraqi capital Baghdad.

The agency said in a statement today that its detachments in the governorates of Salah al-Din and Diyala managed to dismantle a terrorist detachment belonging to the so-called Diyala sector, and to arrest its four members, including a suicide bomber, who intends to blow himself up during the New Year holidays in Baghdad, according to judicial orders.

The statement indicated the arrest of (the detachment commander, transporter, and soldier). As they recorded their statements fundamentalist and admitted that they had received instructions to destabilize and cause a security breach in the capital during Christmas; They have been referred to the competent legal authorities to take the necessary measures against them.   LINK

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