KTFA:
Henig: To confront corruption and control the movement of money.. Iraq obliges its institutions to apply electronic payment
1/26/2023
BAGHDAD – Iraq is moving towards using electronic payment tools to reform the economy, withdraw cash from homes to the banking sector, and combat financial and administrative corruption within government institutions.
The country has recently witnessed a development in the use of electronic payment tools, after a shy start in 2017, but it is still not enough.
The trend aims to settle the salaries of state employees in banks; As of the middle of last year, there were about 8 million bank accounts in Iraq, in addition to 15.5 million bank cards, more than 9 thousand electronic payment devices, and 1697 automatic teller machines, according to the Central Bank of Iraq.
A few days ago, the Iraqi government decided to oblige all of its institutions – in addition to private schools and universities, gas stations, stores, restaurants, pharmacies, medical clinics, and others – to use electronic payment tools, and gave them the full transition to that trend until the beginning of next June.
Give up cash
The Central Bank supported the government’s directive to publish electronic payment tools in all stores, according to Ammar Hamad, Deputy Governor of the Central Bank, who said that this decision aims to gradually abandon the use of cash, and that this will have great advantages for the economy, noting that the government granted privileges to all shop owners. with exemption from tax.
Hamad pointed out that the Central Bank will take decisions to support this trend by reducing the cost to the merchant, explaining that the Central Bank will grant the electronic card holder the dollar at a price of 1465 dinars instead of 1470 dinars.
Iraqis suffer from poor dealings with the banking system because of the conditions that the country has faced since the eighties of the last century, which led to the economic blockade, and the failure of modern technologies to enter the banking system except in the past few years.
According to the statistical website of the Central Bank of Iraq, the exported currency amounts to 87.56 trillion dinars, of which 80.6 trillion dinars are outside the banking system, which indicates that 92% of the currency is stored in homes.
turning point in the economy
Regarding the government’s move, Ali Tariq, Executive Director of the Association of Iraqi Private Banks, said that the deployment of electronic payment tools is a turning point in the Iraqi economy, and it has positive repercussions represented in withdrawing the cash mass present in homes to the banking system, which will be able to invest it in supporting productive projects that contribute to The cycle of money continues.
He added to Al-Jazeera Net that banks and electronic payment companies are able to publish electronic payment tools in all institutions and stores, indicating that exempting the merchant from tax represents a step to disseminate these tools.
The previous government headed by Mustafa Al-Kazemi approved a program to spread banking services by increasing digital platforms, mobile payments, and so on, and it granted a two-year period for its implementation, but the program was not fully implemented.
community culture
However, Ali Mustafa, a specialist in electronic payment, stressed the difficulty of society abandoning the use of cash, due to the widespread culture among Iraqis of preferring cash, in addition to “the existence of a government will that refuses to publish electronic payment tools because they benefit from it due to financial and administrative corruption,” he said.
Mustafa told Al-Jazeera Net that the success of the matter requires punitive decisions for all reluctant government institutions if they do not implement the publication of payment tools, such as cutting off the budget from them, indicating that there are several decisions issued by previous governments that were not implemented and remained a dead letter.
He pointed out that the salary settlement project was not completed, and the citizen opened a bank account only, and when the salary transfers, he withdraws it and does not use his account in the payment process to purchase his daily needs, explaining that the state must bear additional costs to encourage society to digital transformation by giving discounts to everyone who buys. with his bank card.
And he indicated that the state has established electronic platforms for issuing passports, national cards, transferring car ownership, and others, but they remained incomplete due to the lack of electronic payment devices, adding that governance in government services is very necessary, because it will reduce time and increase the efficiency of institutions.
He pointed to the great benefits of electronic payment, including activating electronic commerce and eliminating problems related to electronic payment, in addition to reducing financial and administrative corruption in government departments and others.
Ali Mustafa stressed the need to raise people’s awareness of using these services to prevent them from being stolen through the bank card’s secret numbers.
Source : Al Jazeera LINK
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Henig: IMO: I enjoy this man’s artful writing. He could just as easily be talking about the United States, her politicians, and her financial institutions.
Corruption Pandemic!
Written by: Salem Mashkour
Corruption is no longer confined to individuals, but rather corruption of conscience and souls, its practical translation depends on the possibility of the corrupt having access to public or private money, and even dereliction of duty as a form of corruption.
What everyone sees is the great corruption that is carried out by a politician, a high-ranking official, or a company that takes the official’s corruption as a cover for its corruption, and cheats on the quality of the service that is supposed to be provided. Corruption at its highest levels has become a real pandemic, its heroes are monsters that are not satisfied with forbidden money and are not content with some of it, and it is a sacred goal that it strives to achieve with all tools, even if it harms society, its economy, its security, and the lives of its children. Before us, the dollar crisis is a vivid example of these mafias using the citizen’s strength and stability, by manipulating the exchange rate to achieve imaginary profits. It is the brutal corruption in which many politicians and officials have been implicated in one way or another.
What is visible on the surface is corruption worth millions of dollars, or even billions? But are other levels free of corruption, and are other non-official political sectors free of corruption?
The corrupt seniors are the sons of this society, and they are the product of its culture and history, a culture that did not pertain to a handful of people who became officials, but rather includes society as a whole.
Its sources are diverse, between the difficult economic conditions that society has gone through for decades, foolish wars that have killed hundreds of thousands physically, millions of Iraqis morally and psychologically, the decline in the role of the family in education, and the role of religion in building an internal deterrent to man, by besieging the religious institution and accusing it of treason or opposing
The system is even for the religiously committed person, without forgetting the historical legacy of many groups of Iraqi society that include looting in the category of boilers, as well as the political problem with tyrannical regimes, which considered the ruler and his clan the owners of the homeland, which paved the way for the promotion of the idea of legalizing public money, far from the foundation. The religious falsehood of these fatwas, which many rely on, and is based on the fact that the ruling is illegitimate because it is not subject to a religious reference.
All of this produced a culture of looting, which was limited to the ruler’s head, his family and his clan, then allowing limited corruption under the pretext of helping the employee and the worker during the time of the siege.
However, the big boom occurred after 2003, the disappearance of the official deterrent factor and the availability of funds in large sums, so corruption incentives escalated at all levels. Whoever extends his hand does not hesitate to take public money. The senior official gets millions to develop into tens or even hundreds of millions, and the lowest level extends his hand less and does not hesitate, and so on until we reach the lowest levels.
The problem is that all people complain about corruption, some of them are honest and others are upset because they can’t handle money. The criterion has become “the possibility of taking” and not sanctity, and “immoral” extending the hand to public and private money.
When the owner of a clean hand raises the slogan of combating corruption and has the ability to fight it, then we will have hope of surviving this pandemic. LINK
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