{Economic: Al-Furat News} An economist revealed what the government decision to import 4 commercial goods through the electronic platform of the Central Bank of Iraq will achieve at the official price of the exchange of the dollar.
Salah Nouri told {Al-Furat News}, that “the import of cars, gold, cigarettes and mobile phones represent a large proportion of the volume of imports,” building that “provide them through the electronic platform of the Central Bank at the official exchange rate.”
He stressed that the measure will lead to “not resorting to the parallel market and thus less demand for the dollar in it and this will reduce the rise of the exchange rate, because the relationship is a direct relationship between the demand for the dollar in the parallel market and the rise of the exchange rate.”
Nouri pointed out that “it will facilitate the monitoring of the source of funds in the national import currency, and this is related to the detection of money laundering, because before the approval of the Central Bank for the import, the source is followed up by the Office of Combating Money Laundering and Financing Terrorism, as the importer submits his request to the bank approved exclusively by the Central Bank, and this bank is obliged to investigate the source of funds before entering the electronic platform.”
He pointed out that the decision “will achieve the subjection of imported materials to the customs duty and tax accounting, provided that the employees in the outlets of the customs authority and the tax departments are impartial.”
The Council of Ministers issued last Tuesday in the field of trade regulation, and the import operations of some materials and commodities, which some traders are forced to finance from the informal market of foreign currency, and the negative repercussions of that financing on the exchange rate, a number of decisions and procedures aimed at facilitating the benefit of importers of goods (gold, cars, mobile phones, cigarettes), of the services of the external banking financial transfers platform, which facilitates importers of these goods to obtain foreign currency financing at the official exchange rate and prevents them from resorting to buying foreign currency from the unofficial market.
The Prime Minister’s Office pointed out that these decisions “will reflect positively on the reduction of the price of foreign currency in the informal market, as trade in the mentioned materials constitutes a large part of the demands for foreign currency in the informal market, as these decisions included the reduction of customs duties on containers and another reduction related to cigarette import fees and the adoption of certificates of origin issued by the chambers of commerce of exporting countries. These decisions also included simplifying the procedures for importing gold through air ports and with a 24-hour service.”
Raghd Daham
