Economic development in Iraq, components and ways of advancement

Abstract

Until the end of the seventies, Iraq was able to achieve a degree of development that the oil resource helped to achieve. In 1975, Iraq was in the category of middle-income developing countries and in the middle category of them. It was expected to enter the category of high-income countries in two decades with the events of substantial industrial and urban progress. In the field of crude oil production, its production capacity approached 3.8 million barrels per day, and its exports were 3.2 million barrels per day in 1980. Initial measures were taken to increase oil production capacity to 5.5 million barrels per day, and a wide range of manufacturing projects were completed, in addition to significant progress in electricity production, with a move towards Removing bottlenecks in infrastructure and services, and the levels of education and health were commensurate with its total economic potential. However, our country bears the seeds of ruin in its political structure, which was always in crisis. The authority remained a focus of constant tension, terror and bouts of bloodshed, in an atmosphere of apparent and continuous regional conflict, competing ideologies and ambitions for hegemony.

 Political and cultural factors explain what happened to Iraq since the start of the Iran-Iraq war, through the invasion of Kuwait, the first Gulf War, and the economic sanctions on Iraq and its oppressed people as a result of its invasion of sister Kuwait and the US military invasion in 2003.

Iraq entered the war with Iran with oil surpluses of nearly $40 billion and was exhausted at the end of 1982. The development effort almost stopped that year, and Iraq’s dependence on foreign loans increased until it reached $82 billion at the end of the war in 1988.

The same reason is the insufficiency of oil revenues. Reliance on borrowing from the Central Bank began to finance internal spending, and it became the only source in the years of sanctions between the end of the war with Iran and the sanctions decision in August 1990. Serious attempts were made to resume development that had stopped, and many projects were launched for industrial development, electricity generation, and others.