Iraq now expects to earn $25 billion in oil export revenues in six months due to the rising price of oil, the state news agency reported on Friday, citing the country’s finance minister.

The Iraqi federal government is yet to receive any revenues or funds from oil exports from the northern Kurdish region although it is obliged to pay them, Ali Abdul Ameer Allawi added.

Global oil prices have been on the rise since the war in Ukraine began on February 24 and the US has also repeatedly urged OPEC members to increase oil production in order to stabilise the market. Iraq is also part of the agreement on production levels.

Concerns about the Ukraine conflict stoking inflation and denting economic growth dominated trading in the second half of the week, with the International Monetary Fund slashing its global growth forecast by nearly a full percentage point.

The year 2020 represented the most difficult economic interval that Iraq has endured. Since 2003 it has gone through a moribund period that showed a future in which oil prices will collapse and global demand will decline.

“2020 was a glimpse of what could happen and it was a very dangerous moment and one of the factors that led us to look at the structural issues affecting the Iraqi economy,” Allawi said in his speech on the sidelines of the spring meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Washington.

The Iraqi government is dependent on oil revenues to cover its costs and pay the salaries of civil servants. Despite suffering in much of 2021 due to record low oil prices, the country’s economy is once again booming as oil prices are increasing globally.
Source: The Arab Weekly