PRESS RELEASE 29 DECEMBER 2013 

IBBC and its Members Feature as Financial Times Reports on Iraq’s Economic Boom.

A Financial Times article published on 29 December 2013 described how Iraq’s “vast oil wealth and sizzling growth rates” have led a number of large companies to continue to expand their presence in the country.

Business in Iraq for IBBC member PwC grew by 30 per cent in 2013, and senior partner Ismail Maraqa described the opportunities as “huge”. He expanded that whilst investment interests in Iraq were previously dominated by the country’s lucrative energy industry, a number of other sectors were beginning to grow rapidly.

Journalist Borzou Daragahi described how Iraq’s dramatic economic expansion has not been hindered by a recent upsurge in violence. Rising out of the economic disaster experienced under Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s GDP has doubled since 2003.

IBBC Executive Chairman Baroness Nicholson explained how interest in Iraq has grown sharply, most notably since the US troop withdrawal in 2008. Baroness Nicholson described the role IBBC has played; supporting those working in Iraq through intimate knowledge of the physical and economic terrain.

Obstacles remain however, as efforts continue to strip away the crippling level of bureaucracy that built up before Iraq’s liberation in 2003. Whilst a difficulty, it has failed to deter Standard Chartered, another IBBC member company, which opened a branch in Baghdad in November and plans to roll out new branches in Erbil and Basrah in 2014. Iraq Chief Executive Gavin Wishart, a council member with IBBC, hailed the “substantial opportunity” for Standard Chartered to “play a leading role in the economic development of the country”.