Economic policy and prospects in Iraq

摘要

Economic reform was central to the Coalition Provisional Authority's attempts to rebuild Iraq. Coalition Administrator L. Paul Bremer (2003) made this clear in his first speech before the international community, delivered on June 23, 2003, before a special meeting of the World Economic Forum held in Amman, Jordan. Noting that "the first job of any government is to maintain law and order," Bremer began his talk with a pledge to confront the looters, saboteurs and street criminals that plagued Iraq after the war. Bremer also noted that a governing council of Iraqis would soon be established to help manage the country. But most of Bremer's speech focused on what he called his "third and most immediate priority," rebuilding the economy. Bremer described a state where more than 60 percent of the population depended on government food rations to survive. After achieving middle-income status in the late 1970s, Iraq's economy imploded during its war with Iran in the 1980s and the UN sanctions that followed the Persian Gulf War in 1990-1991. The Iraqi government responded to the international sanctions by printing money to finance its operations, stoking inflation and debasing the currency. Other economic problems were strictly domestic in origin. The government controlled investment decisions through its control of oil revenues, propped up money-losing state-owned enterprises and spent billions on wasteful consumer subsidies.