Baqir Al-Saadi, a member of the House of Representatives, stated today, Wednesday, that 20 percent of Iraq’s international commerce is now attributed to the currency basket’s diversification.
In an interview, Al-Saadi stated that “the concept of a basket of diverse currencies as strategic reserves for countries within their central banks, in addition to bilateral dealing in other currencies, has begun to produce adverse results by putting pressure on the dollar and its repeated use as a tool by America to promote its interests in the world, including Iraq.”
“Iraq actually started to diversify the basket of currencies and began pumping some of them and pushing traders to deal with them according to economic mechanisms,” he continued. “This is a positive indicator,” he said, adding that “foreign trade increased by up to 20%.”
He noted that “there is a different strategy in the financial dealing mechanisms that will contribute to protecting hard currencies, blocking the path to smuggling, and supporting the sale of the dollar at official rates,” adding that “the demand to deal in other countries’ currencies will reduce the pressure of the dollar on the parallel market and lead to a reduction in its prices, and thus its impact will no longer be greater.”
Despite pressure from the Iraqi Central Bank’s initiatives to reduce the danger of smuggling and establish import systems, the parallel market for dollar exchange rates has shown considerable stability in recent weeks.
