Forum is set to address problems facing Iraq’s economy – VP

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashimi said on Sunday that the convening of the 1st National Iraqi Economic Forum is to address the problems facing the country’s economy. “The global financial meltdown will have wide-scale repercussions that will impact the Iraqi economy for many years to come,” Hashimi said in an inaugural speech at the forum held in Baghdad. “Those repercussions will not be confined only to the financial sector, but will also extend to overshadow other sectors, including oil, which would have negative impact on the 2009 state budget appropriations,” he added. He expected foreign investment and development and reconstruction projects in Iraq to decline “in one way or another”. Hashimi noted that the Iraqi parliament’s financial committee has reviewed the 2009 state budget and came up with cuts up to 5 trillion Iraq dinars from the operational allocations save employees and the social care umbrella. “According to statistics, 25 percent of the workforce is absorbed by the agricultural sector, considering the facts that 30% of Iraq’s population are outside the country, that Iraq is losing no less than 5% of its arable lands and that the inflation rate is currently put at 14 percent according to the Central Bank of Iraq (CBI) estimates,” said the Iraqi vice president.   AmR (S)/SR 1