Iraq's banks now computerized and ready for world trade
Jul 08, 2011
Here is another google-translated article from the Iraqi news. It says that the World Bank has finally finished its restructuring of the five state-owned banks in Iraq. If I am reading this correctly, it means that now the Iraqi banks are fully computerized and are able to wire money world-wide. Its currency can now be truly tradeable throughout the world by internet.
Baghdad, July 8 (Rn) – The World Bank announced on Friday that it had completed the plans and technical procedures, financial and legal to develop the good performance of the bank and state-owned Iraq and restructuring.
The director of the unit restructuring banks Majid picture of Kurdistan News Agency (Rn) that “the unity of the restructuring of the problem by the World Bank completed the plans and technical procedures, financial and legal that will improve the performance of a bank of good and Mesopotamia and restructuring in line with the electronic development in the work of international banks”.
Keep in mind that when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in August of 1990, and when the UN imposed trade sanctions on Iraq a few days later, there was virtually no internet at the time. Their banking system was primitive by today's standards. Because of trade sanctions, their banking technology was frozen along with their assets. When the US took over Iraq in 2003, they had to completely upgrade their computers and programs before they could feasibly restart world trade using their own currency (and banks).
This has now been "completed," says the World Bank.
Up to now, it would have done little good to remove the trade sanctions on Iraq, because they would have remained severely handicapped in trying to conduct world trade in dinars. It seems to me that this computer upgrade could well be the key to Iraq's emergence in the world, with a tradeable currency and listed on the FOREX.
Friday and Saturday the banks are closed in Iraq. It will be interesting to see if this completion was the final hindrance to the dinar's revaluation. Saturday may be too soon to watch, but Sunday is 7-10 on the calendar (as we write it). It correlates with 7-10 on the Hebrew calendar, which is the day of Jubilee.