Iraq's Economic Development Strategies: The Challenges and Requirements

Abstract

Sustainable development, with its economic, social, environmental aspects, is required for the advancement of human life in developing countries. This can be achieved after examining the challenges (economic and non-economic and internal and external) and the requirements for development, while acknowledging that the process of identifying the philosophy of the economic system and orientations and defining the role of the state in economic management and policies is extremely important and necessary in Iraq. The research found that the policy of economic reform implemented by the Iraqi government could not achieve high economic growth rates and stable guarantees for development but created economic improvement in some economic indicators in limited periods. The existence of a pre-2003 economic philosophy a clear guarantee of the achievement of economic development after 2003 resulted in policies and programmes of economic reform being instituted. These achieved some positive results by reducing inflation and stabilising the exchange rate of the Iraqi dinar and the high value and high volume of foreign exchange reserves, amounting to a 60 billion dollar reduction (80%) and scheduling of external debt. The country’s GDP has witnessed improvements by increasing oil exports. However, the contribution of other economic sectors except oil continued to contribute to the formation of low-GDP ratios. This paper attempts to characterise the economic reforms which have been adopted by the Iraqi governments in recent years and to explain the strategy of the economic reform programmes for achieving economic development in Iraqi economic sectors. These suffer from underdevelopment and not keeping pace economically with the countries of the advanced capitalist world.