IRAQ: 'Free market' looting spree continues

Rohan Pearce

The Reuters wire service revealed on February 9 that Al Rafidayn, Iraq's largest bank, has sacked one-third of its 7300 employees in preparation for privatisation. Bank chairperson Daya al Khayoun told Reuters that Al Rafidayn accounts for three-quarters of Iraq's bank deposits.

It is just the latest move by the US-led invaders to introduce the benefits of the "free market" to Iraq (under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, the country's capitalist economy was dominated by state-owned monopolies in many sectors).

Agence France Presse reported on June 12 that Washington planned to "privatise the first of Iraq's 100 or so state-owned firms within a year as it begins overhauling the centralised economy of Saddam Hussein without waiting for a new government".

In September, head of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) Paul Bremer issued an order to begin the "transition from a non-transparent centrally planned economy to a market economy characterised by sustainable economic growth through the establishment of a dynamic private sector". The order abolished most restrictions on foreign domination of Iraq's industries. It stated that any "foreign investor shall be entitled to make investments in Iraq on terms no less favourable than those applicable to an Iraqi investor".

Under the terms of the decree, Iraqi control of the banking sector could be eliminated entirely within five years.

Alongside Al Rafidayn, other major state-owned firms earmarked for privatisation include Kimadia, Iraq's pharmaceutical corporation.

"Privatising the pharmaceutical industry will make things run more efficiently, since Kimadia was corrupt and losing money under the old regime anyway", Colonel Scott Svabek, the CPA-appointed CEO of Kimadia, told the news service of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

A member of Medecins Sans Frontiers, the international medical relief agency, responded: "Kimadia may not have worked efficiently, but it made low-cost medicine available to patients who needed it."

According to a February 11 Associated Press report, the World Trade Organisation has granted Iraq observer status — the first step towards full membership of the Western-dominated "free trade" body.

From Green Left Weekly, February 25, 2004.

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From GLW issue 572