Including debt cancellation… Determining the mechanisms for US Treasury support for Iraq
Today, Sunday, the Prime Minister’s Advisor, Mazhar Mohammed Salih, announced the mechanisms of the US Treasury’s support for Iraq since 2003, while he indicated the continuation of consultations with the US Treasury regarding combating money laundering.
Saleh told the official agency, which was followed by “Al-Eqtisad News”: “The cooperation and coordination between Iraq and the US Treasury extends back to the first years since the change of the former regime,” indicating that “the Treasury played an important supporting role in supporting the Paris Club agreement in 2004 concerned with writing off Iraq’s debts called pre-1990 debts, and the presence of Treasury representatives in the Paris Club agreement secretariat helped ensure the writing off of 80% or more of the former regime’s debts.”
“The US Treasury succeeded in supporting infrastructure financing in Iraq through the conference held in the Spanish capital Madrid on October 23-24, 2003. Its primary goal was to mobilize financial support for the reconstruction of Iraq after the US-led invasion in 2003. Seventy countries and international organizations participated in the conference,” he added, explaining that “the conference managed to collect pledges amounting to about $33 billion, but a large part of these amounts was in the form of loans or technical support, and not all of it was direct financial aid.”
He explained that “the US Treasury contributed to establishing the Iraqi payments system in 2006 through a direct technical agreement with the Central Bank of Iraq to establish a wholesale payments system between the Central Bank on the one hand and the banks and the government in transferring funds and settling them electronically on the other hand, in addition to entering the era of settling bank checks electronically as well, which are matters in financial technology that are being introduced for the first time in our country,”
Noting that “from the history of the important assistance provided by the Treasury, it has played an important role in replacing the local, fast-forgery edition of the dinar that was issued during the nineties siege in the largest campaign witnessed by Iraq between late 2003 and early 2004 with the international edition of the dinar, according to the highest international technical specifications.”
He stressed that “since the signing of the Strategic Framework Agreement in 2008 until today, there have been continuous consultations between representatives of the financial and monetary authorities in our country and the treasury to cooperate in combating money laundering and the proceeds of crime and terrorism in a manner that achieves governance and compliance for our financial and banking system as well as its optimal integration into the global financial and economic climate.”
