I didn’t participate in the writing of #whitepaper; I am presenting my personal views on the #whitepaper telecom chapter that has been presented by the Iraqi Gov to Iraqi Parliament and what it means for the telecom sector specifically. [LONG THREAD]: 1/ The overall theme of the paper is to highlight the oversized of the role Public sector in the economy and clearly admits that there are no major private sector players in the economy that do not depend on government contracts except the telecom sector.

Iraqi SOEs are back at it again shaking down delivery start ups and private sector companies in Iraq charging them 45-75 million IQD annually for delivery licenses. ITPC, is a state owned company belonging to Ministry of Communications, has circulated an order in the last couple of days threatening technology startups with “a six month jail time” for anyone that does package deliveries without a license from them since they have a monopoly.