WE MUST NOT FORGET THE HISTORY OF OUR INVESTMENT, FOR IT IS ABOUT TO REPEAT ITSELF. This may be old news to some of you, But to many it will be enlightening.
When officially introduced at the end of the British mandate (1932), the dinar [consisting of 1,000 fils or 20 dirhams] was equal to, and was linked to, the British pound sterling, which at that time was equal to US$4.86.
Iraqi dinar (ID) equaled US$4.86 between 1932 and 1949 and after devaluation in 1949, equaled US$2.80 between 1949 and 1971. Iraq officially uncoupled the dinar from the pound sterling as a gesture of independence in 1959, but the dinar remained at parity with the pound until the British unit of currency was again devalued in 1967.
One Iraqi dinar remained equal to US$2.80 until December 1971, when major realignments of world currencies began. Upon the devaluation of the United States dollar in 1973, the Iraqi dinar appreciated to US$3.39. It remained at this level until the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980. In 1982 Iraq devalued the dinar by 5 percent, to a value equal to US$3.22, and sustained this official exchange rate without additional devaluation despite mounting debt.
In early 1988, the official dinar-dollar exchange rate was still ID1 to US$3.22; however, with estimates of the nation’s inflation rate ranging from 25 percent to 50 percent per year in 1985 and 1986, the dinar’s real transaction value, or black market exchange rate, was far lower– only about half the 1986 official rate.
The Iraqi dinar was worth $US3.20 before the United Nations embargo that followed Iraq’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait. By August 2002 it was trading at just below 2000 to the US dollar, and by mid-April 2003 it had slipped to anywhere between 3500 and 4000 against the dollar. In July 2003 one US dollar equaled about 1,500 Iraqi dinars.
WE ALL KNOW WHERE IT STANDS TODAY, currently
