Thread by @RudawEnglish

"In these two years, there has been a great rise of inflation which has exceeded 7 or 8 percent," Ali Mohsen al-Alaq, governor of Iraq's Central Bank, said in a panel on "Economic Policy: The Dinar & the Challenge of Growth" in the Sulaimani Forum.
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"If our border crossings were organized on a high level and all operations were thoroughly recorded, the Central Bank could monitor the outflow of dollars in a better manner," Alaq added while describing the difficulties of controlling the smuggling of dollars.
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"We had seen, unfortunately, a growing number of suspicious transactions and a large, huge amount of wire transfers leaving the country on a fraudulent basis," Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in Iraq David Burger said about dollar smuggling from Iraq.
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"Very few components are being sourced locally, most of our components are manufactured outside Iraq," said Basima Abdulrahman, founder & CEO of KESK, an Iraq-based green services company, stressing that the fluctuation of dinar-dollar greatly impacts her business.
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"Clients are not comfortable with spending money when they're not [getting as much value for their money]," Abdulrahman added.
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"I think we are a quarter of the way there, the next step is passing it through the Council of Representatives, then we're half the way there. The next step is implementation," Deputy Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region Qubad Talabani said about the budget law.
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"The closer that the federal government and regional government are to each other, the more likely we are to cover these challenges," Talabani added.
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"We can't live with cosmetic arrangements anymore. We need to finalize, once and for all, the oil policies in this country," Talabani stressed, calling for an end to "side agreements" and rather working towards a concrete agreement.
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"We have to have, again, a lasting deal that is sustainable, constitutional, and implementable with Baghdad, and that's when investors will finally be confident in the system that we have," Talabani stated about IOCs investing in the Kurdistan Region.
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"We need an oil law that is clear and explicit, and that makes the sale of this product clear," he continued.
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"Personally ... I don't care who sells our oil. Whoever sells it for the best price should sell our oil. Whoever can sell our oil in the most transparent way should sell our oil," Talabani said.
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"The country added to the budget 21 trillion Iraqi dinars for the salaries of public servants. This was not our decision, but it was the decision of the parliament in the previous two governments," Iraqi Finance Minister Mohammed Ali Tamim said.
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"In my opinion, this may not be the opinion of the Kurdistan Regional Government ... we need to restructure SOMO, create a new marketing entity that" caters "to both the federal and regional governments," Deputy PM Talabani said. "That's the long-term ... solution"
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