Can Iraq, through its economic participation with Egypt and Jordan, achieve ambitious development?

Iraq intends to put forward a huge economic project under the name of "The New Orient" during the tripartite summit, which Baghdad is expected to host soon, with the participation of Egypt and Jordan.

Iraq seeks through the project - according to its Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kazemi - to bring about major changes that the region has not witnessed at various economic and investment levels and to coordinate positions on the region’s issues in international and regional forums.

And the next summit - according to the Iraqi government - will be a qualitative addition that will contribute to the advancement of the economic integration plan between the three countries, including projects in electric power, its supply to Iraq, the export of Iraqi oil through the Jordanian port of Aqaba and an understanding on the employment of inter-employment.

The summit was scheduled to take place last Saturday, but Al-Kazemi announced that it was postponed indefinitely, due to a collision between two trains in Egypt, which resulted in the death of 32 people and the injury of 108 others.

If the summit is held, it will be the second of its kind among the three countries.

The first summit was held in the Jordanian capital, Amman, last August.

Iraq says that, through the proposed project, it seeks to develop a plan to increase the volume of trade exchange with Jordan in the near future, to reach one billion dollars in the first phase, and then to 5 billion dollars, according to Al-Kazemi, who expressed his dissatisfaction with the weakness of the current trade exchange between the two countries.

It is noteworthy that the Iraqi government agreed at the beginning of this year to exempt Jordanian goods from customs tariffs.

Jordanian exports to Iraq last year amounted to about 630 million dollars and non-oil imports amounted to 62 million dollars, according to the Jordanian Department of Statistics.

The volume of trade between Iraq and Egypt last year reached 486 million dollars, of which 479 million dollars were Egyptian exports and 7 million dollars were imports from Iraq, according to the Egyptian State Information Service.

The volume of trade exchange reached one billion and 650 thousand dollars in 2018, which is the largest number of trade exchange between Egypt and Iraq since 2003.

Al-Obaidi expressed his fear that the new project would be an attempt to evade the Iraqi customs tariff (Al-Jazeera Net)

tariff

Commenting on the "New Orient" project, Manar Al-Obeidi, head of the Future Iraq Foundation for Economic Studies, expressed a cautious welcome, saying, "We welcome any economic openness for Iraq." However, he expressed his fear about the part of the economic city that is to be established - according to the "New East" project - at the borders Iraqi Jordanian.

Al-Obeidi explained to Al-Jazeera Net that there is a fear that this city is an attempt to evade the Iraqi customs tariff for Jordanian and Egyptian products and all products that are repacked in that city.

He also expressed his fear that Jordanian and Egyptian workers would be used at the expense of Iraqi workers.

Jawad expressed his fear that the new project would support solving the unemployment problem in the other two countries at the expense of Iraq (Al-Jazeera Net)

Road workers land

For his part, economic affairs researcher Rami Mohsen Jawad said that Egyptian officials emphasized that the new project - especially the clause of the land road agreement and transportation pricing - would facilitate the transfer of Egyptian workers to and from Iraq, which may solve the problem of unemployment in Egypt at the expense of Iraqi workers. It also suffers at a high level of pretentiousness.

Jawad considered that Iraq's recent devaluation of the dinar’s exchange value against the dollar is in the interest of Iraq.

However, he expressed fear that the other two countries would devalue their currencies to push their exports to Iraq further.

According to the "New Orient" project, Iraq intends to employ Egyptian workers, who are cheap and have various skills, within a joint industrial city between Iraq and Jordan, as well as facilitate the passage of goods and labor through a land route linking the three countries, while Iraq suffers from high levels of unemployment and poverty, The government has been complaining about hiring pressures and an increase in the salary bill, says Jawad.

According to estimates regarding Egyptian workers working in Iraq, the Employment Enrollment Division of the Federation of Egyptian Chambers of Commerce announced that "their current number ranges from 100,000 to 150,000 workers."

The "mercantile" strategy

As for economic researcher Yasser Al-Saleem, he indicated - in his speech to Al-Jazeera Net - that the tripartite summit will make Egypt adopt the "Mercantile" strategy that allowed Britain to dominate the world for 120 years, and allowed the United States - more than 90 years ago - to dominate the world as well. .

And "mercantile" is an economic system for trade that was applied by Britain from the 16th to the 18th century. It was based on the principle that the world's wealth was stable and mainly composed of precious metals, and Britain tried to accumulate the largest possible share of those wealth, maximizing its exports and limiting its imports. .

Egypt is striving - according to researcher Yasser Al-Saleem - to follow this strategy that achieves trade surpluses, relying on the fact that Egyptian products are distinguished by their low prices, in addition to the low exchange rate of the Egyptian pound, which will boost the volume of its exports.

Al-Shaibani demanded that Iraq's economic partnership be with great countries (Al-Jazeera Net)

The Iraqi negotiator is weak

In every economic agreement, the position of the Iraqi negotiator is very weak for reasons related to rampant financial and administrative corruption, according to economic researcher Moqdam al-Shaibani.

Al-Shaibani considers that the economic partnership of Iraq must be with the great countries such as America and China to advance the economic and service realities of Iraq.

The economic researcher criticizes Iraq’s going to an economic agreement with countries such as Egypt and Jordan, explaining that according to the Doing Business report, Jordan ranks 75th in the world, and the level of per capita income in it of the national product is 4 thousand and 210 dollars, while Egypt ranks 114th and the level of per capita income of output National $ 2,800.

Al-Shaibani believes that the economic partnership of Iraq with these two countries is not at the level of a strategic partnership that requires the Iraqi negotiator to concede at the expense of the rentier economy.

Iran and Turkey

The forthcoming "New Orient" project will undermine the volume of Iranian and Turkish exports to the Iraqi market, and turn it into an incubator for the Jordanian and Egyptian industries, according to researcher Jawad, who believes that Ankara and Tehran will not stand idly by towards the project and may work to sabotage it.

Al-Obaidi welcomed any economic agreement or the establishment of joint industrial projects with any neighboring or non-neighboring country, provided that the agreement is in the interest of Iraq first.

But he added that Iraq does not need industrial and economic cities in which its consumers and others are the source with the addition of tariff evasion.