Word: iraq
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Just before U.S. markets went into meltdown and venerable financial institutions teetered or collapsed, several of Iraq's 18 provinces, including Diyala in the northeast, suffered their own cash crunch, literally running out of cash. Bank notes. Bills. Some public-sector bank branches, mainly in Diyala, ran out of physical bank notes because of a combination of unforeseen demand and a lapse in importing new currency notes from printers based overseas. It is the latest inefficiency to stymie the country's long-delayed reconstruction efforts...
...Iraq's coffers may technically be burgeoning with billions of petrodollars, but over the summer, the vaults of some branches of the country's two main state-owned commercial banks, the Rafidain and Rasheed, were empty. A kink in the supply chain owing to miscommunication among several financial bodies meant that the flow of physical bank notes to some provinces like Diyala was reduced to a trickle. There was no shortage of cash on the streets of the province, but government pensions and salaries were delayed, as were payments to contractors, who in turn didn't have the cold hard...
...repeatedly said the Iraqi government must dip deeper into its own coffers to finance the country's reconstruction projects. To date, American taxpayers have shelled out some $50 billion, according to the most recent quarterly U.S. congressional report. The Iraqi government has matched that. Still, the reconstruction of Iraq is not simply a question of who foots the bill or which companies get the contracts. Iraq's rebuilding efforts are being hamstrung by sclerotic administrative procedures that are in desperate need of modernization, after decades of inefficient centralized control, corruption, cronyism, wars and sanctions. "It's almost as if Saddam...
...flight of hundreds of thousands of Iraq's best and brightest during the war (and before) has also resulted in many sectors severely lacking in professionals. During recent talks between the Electricity Ministry and General Electric over a multibillion-dollar deal to pump 7,000 megawatts of sorely needed power through Iraq's fitful grid, the ministry sent a negotiating team of only three people. Says Barnich, who helped facilitate the talks: "There's just nobody there...
...under Iraqi government control. They are increasingly replacing Iraqi police as targets, despite the overall decline of violence, the report said. This year also marks the first in which civilian deaths outside of Baghdad outnumber those within the capital, a shift that Iraqi officials say reflects the fact that Iraq's largest city has become vastly more secure...