Famous quotes

"Happiness can be defined, in part at least, as the fruit of the desire and ability to sacrifice what we want now for what we want eventually" - Stephen Covey

Thursday, February 18, 2010

What has happened to the oil in Iraq

I was browsing and analysing the economic effect of the Post Saddam Iraq through reading many articles on the subject in Iraq.First of all,lets look at what happened in the Post war Iraq regarding oil.Paul Bremer, the chief executive of Iraq representing the US ordered the full privatization of the oil resources of the country leading to the International companies readily ending owning most of the oil resources of the country.The important factor is that he has also allowed full repatriation of profits to their parent country and also with a tax rate of 15%.Morover there is no indication of any subsidies for the domestic sales.This policy is worse than Colonial times cause the only thing that Iraq has got is the oil.Ofcourse Iraq's economy will grow with the increase of oil production but Iraq will lose its hold of its resources at the hands of International oil companies who has the right to repatriate their windfall profits they will make at Iraq's expense to their parent companies.Moreover i don't think any company will agree to provide them at the subsidized rates for the Domestic use in Iraq whereas almost all oil exporting countries are providing the same at subsidized rates.Whats best is for the Iraq to have a centralized planned economy of the oil like Saudi Arabia and full control over its resources and certainly increase the tax rate along with the controls on the repatriation of profit.Iraq with its huge oil resources and the market prices for oil should have had a GDP per capita greater than the United states itself just through the export of oil.But due to the sanctions and the subsequent war they have fallen back.The Iraqi economy will still grow but certainly not at the direction in which the Iraqis will want.
A full report on the Iraqs cost of conflict based on opporunity cost is analysed and given an India based political think tank

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