Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi approved a request by the central bank to cancel an eight percent tax on foreign currencies brought into the country, Abadi’s office announced in a statement Thursday.
The statement stressed Abadi’s commitment to investigating issues with recent high fluctuations in Iraq’s currency bazaars.
The Central Bank’s top lawyer, Ali Alaq, said the decision to cancel the tax on foreign currencies would stabilize rates on dollar to dinar exchanges.
The dollar to dinar exchange rate rose to its highest level in ten years on June 16 with $100 USD trading for IQD 146,000.
That rate fell to IQD 131,000 on Friday, three days after intervention by the Central Bank.
The price decreased with the attempts of Iraq’s Central Bank after three days of its highest
Before heading to Tehran on Wednesday, Abadi said his government would “strike with an iron fist,” pledging to reprimand anyone found guilty of tampering with exchange rates.
Iraq’s economy, nearly 90 percent dependent on the country’s oil revenue, has suffered due to the global slump in crude oil prices, as well as the cost of the on-going war against Islamic State (IS) militants in the country.
An International Monetary Fund (IMF) mission met recently with Iraqi officials in Amman to discuss an emergency assistance package amounting to $833 million.
According to Carlo Sdralevich, who led the IMF delegation, Iraq’s economy contracted by 2.1 percent in 2014.
“With low oil prices, export revenues have contracted, pushing the current account into a deficit expected to reach 8 percent of GDP in 2015. As a result, foreign assets have declined in 2014 to $67 billion and are projected to fall further this year,” Sdralevich said in a statement following the meetings.
original source: http://nrttv.com/EN/Details.aspx?Jimare=3015