Sunday, July 1, 2012 12:08
New York Times said in its report that “the construction of shopping malls in the Iraqi capital is evidence of progress happening in the country but at the same time develop a culture of consumer society in the country still suffers from many problems, not least inflation, the number of employees in the public sector, corruption, and that makes the building such large complexes like putting crust above the nucleus is corrupt according to the expression represented by the World Bank in Iraq.
Large shopping centers being built in the Iraqi capital and the largest building will include a five star hotel and a hospital, one of these centers, which is currently working up to it every week a truck loaded with a large frozen products from McDonald’s from Jordan.
The building boom presents proof that Iraq was progressing in general and the return to normal after nine years of the U.S. invasion and six months to leave those forces, but economists and experts believe that there is a dark side in that where they say that the emergence of consumer culture to hide fundamental flaws in the economy and makes the state of the economy unchanged in the oil-rich countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, where capital projects are impeded by the almost complete dependence on oil revenues and millions of government salaries are fed by such proceeds become part of a broad system of care in the country.
Says the World Bank representative in Iraq, Mary Helen Bernkl: that “Iraq is basically trying to build a consumer society is based on state capitalism, as in China, for example, but the socialist system.”
He was one of the goals of Washington is building a free market economy in this country, but nevertheless with a wealth of huge oil at hand, the Iraqi leaders failed to take only a few steps in the development of the private sector and therefore, more than 90% of the proceeds of the Iraqi government continues to come of the oil sector. With significant expansion witnessed by the industry, which can multiply the income of Iraq three times to become a $ 300 billion over the next five years remains the question facing the country, which is the one who will do the country with all this criticism. Because of the mental control of the most senior Iraqi officials and rampant corruption are widely and feel the diplomats generally pessimistic because the boom is expected in government revenues will be used either to help develop the private sector or to pay for government jobs ambitious in the country continues to suffer 40% of the population of the opportunity to obtain safe drinking water those who are in dire need him. Experts fear that money to fuel what is already in Iraq: Corruption and government forces operating prepared huge.
The report notes that “most major industries remain in the hands of the state and the largest ambition for many Iraqis is to get a government job. According to statistics issued by the Iraqi Ministry of Planning, one third of the workforce in the country working for the government and that means there is more than 5 million people and the number is rise with the presence of political parties, which controls the ministries and used paychecks to expand their constituencies. says Professor London School of Economics Toby Dodge, in a recently held in London on Iraq: that “government jobs in Iraq has expanded dramatically not technocrats, but members of political parties because state in Iraq has become a means to finance those loyal to the party which undermines and hinders directly from the capacity of the state, is why we believe that we have a large country. “
Because government jobs with higher salaries than the private sector because of the many obstacles faced by the World Bank classified Iraq ranked 153 of total 183 countries in ease of work. Mary Helen Bernkl represented by the World Bank in Iraq: “The construction of the consumer society is nothing like building a bubble will explode in the future and build a large shopping centers, is like putting the crust on the nucleus essentially rotten.”
