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Pros and cons of Iraq's accession to the World Trade Organization
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Mazhar Muhammad Saleh
Since 2003, Iraq has adopted broad policies of openness towards the world and sought to establish important economic and legislative rules that operate according to the mechanisms of the market system, most of which helped improve Iraq’s foreign trade, after an economic blockade that lasted for more than a decade and a half, which led to the marginalization of Iraq on the map of the economic system. Global and depriving it of opportunities for investment, progress, development and technological knowledge that should have helped it face the rapid developments and developments that international markets have taken place and their competitive capabilities have changed dramatically over the past two decades at least.
Thus, Iraq was isolated from its international environment in the midst of a world swept by the currents of mergers of its companies, the liberalization and integration of its markets, especially financial ones, and the rule of the new liberal doctrine, which required broad economic transformations in the field of information technology that became compatible with the internationalization of productive activity through the role that multinational companies began to play and the increasing competitive advantage of products that began Generated by world markets.
Despite this, we find in the integration of financial markets, the value of whose assets have exceeded 850 trillion dollars, that it is the main title of financial globalization and the main focus of hegemony in the global neoliberal economy, and at the same time it represents the path of transition in the axes of international trade and the introduction to the transformation from the scope of the signed GATT agreement.
In the year 1948, the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement was concluded, as the latter focused on regulating a wide spectrum of trade in services, especially financial services, and its annexes were called the GATS Agreement in 1994, based on the Uruguay Round.
At a time when the gross product of about 192 economies in the world does not exceed $83 trillion annually at the present time (and the value of global trade in goods and services has also not increased annually, except by less than a third of the aforementioned global output), we find that trade in currency conversion and speculation in it Short-term capital movements exceed about four and a half trillion dollars daily in the international monetary and financial markets, which is a financial speculative trade whose annual total exceeds more than fifty times the total global trade in goods and services activity.
In the midst of these changes in the international commercial and financial space, Iraq moved to important organizational levels in transitioning to a market economy to break the effects of its international isolation by engaging in a strong area of economic liberalism, which focused on liberalizing the areas of Iraq’s foreign trade of goods and services and ways of financing them, despite The fluctuation of its organization, as well as the development and expansion of areas of progress occurring in some financial services and improving the foreign investment environment through banking and investment legal legislation and the Central Bank Law, allowing foreign banks to operate in Iraq and allowing the transfer of capital and currency in a way that serves Iraq’s openness to the world in economic conditions.
Central rentierism is difficult to understand in terms of market liberalism, which nevertheless has provided positive opportunities and promising legal and regulatory foundations for the Iraqi business environment.
However, all of this is not enough to put Iraq on the path of international economic competition.
There are still more than five thousand legislative texts obstructing economic freedom and market activity, which are being studied by legal circles and which, as the case may be, are amended so that Iraq can integrate into international trade and investment and prepare it to join The World Trade Organization according to the terms of its membership so that our country obtains the most favored nation condition and the principle of national treatment.
However, one of the paradoxes of accession centers on the issues of oil and agriculture, in addition to other problems of accession.
While production in the oil sector dominates approximately 50% of the components of Iraq’s gross domestic product, that sector only uses 2% of the Iraqi labor force, and the country’s exports of crude oil and its revenues constitute the almost absolute majority of total exports and budget revenues.
The public and the country's foreign exchange earnings. In view of all of this, the World Trade Organization excludes crude oil as a commodity within the group of crude commodities that are traded internationally, which still constitutes the essence of the contradiction in Iraq’s accession to that organization, which excludes crude oil.
If the World Trade Organization allowed oil to be taken into account, the price would be left to be determined by global supply and demand, away from the cartel or consumer groups represented by the International Energy Organization and its lines and programs in rationalizing demand for oil.
Or away from the cartel or groupings of producers represented by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its role in regulating production and influencing prices, which set price and quantitative restrictions on a commercial commodity, but strategic and political at the same time, which is the driving force of Iraq’s foreign trade.
On the other side of the Iraqi economy, we find the agricultural sector, which includes less than a third of the Iraqi population and about 22% of the Iraqi labor force, and contributes to the gross domestic product only by a rate not exceeding 5%, making the country an almost net importer of food or agricultural commodities, from which the value of the country’s imports exceeds 14 billion dollars annually, and this important sector, which has been subjected to militarization and neglect over the past thirty years, does not have sufficient capabilities to provide food security in terms of grains or agricultural production requirements after the shrinkage of productive agricultural areas due to desertification, salinization, and the recent water crisis that eliminated more than 50% of Lands intended for agriculture are in addition to the deterioration of the agricultural infrastructure, of which the state controls 83% of its components as a public good.
Here, the agricultural sector contrasts with the oil sector structurally in terms of openness to the global market, with two different wings in terms of the impact of commercial benefits and costs. International market forces or global supply and demand have become strongly controlling, whether in the demand for oil and its impact on the value of Iraqi exports or in the supply of foodstuffs and its impact on the cost of Iraq’s imports from them.
When referring to the philosophy of reducing customs restrictions by 24% and abolishing non-customs restrictions, which are the conditions imposed by the World Trade Organization on the member state of the group of developing countries to implement and implement within a period of six years from the date of accession, in addition to reducing agricultural support by 13.3% during the period Ten years after joining.
We find that these regulatory conditions of the World Trade Organization collide with the terms and conditions of the agricultural market and the global food stock exchange itself.
If we look at the agricultural monopolies in the world and the deterioration of agricultural development in Iraq, we find a real threat to national food security that restricts the country from joining the organization unless it is preceded by starting or proceeding with an agricultural program for self-sufficiency immediately.
We will really need a green revolution similar to what Mexico and many Latin American countries did it. Especially if we know that there are between 3 to 6 major monopolistic companies in the world that control 80 to 90% of agricultural crop trade and control prices and quantities such as wheat, sugar, tea, coffee, cotton, jute...etc. At a time when ten multinational companies still dominate a third of the production and trade of seeds and pesticides in the world.
Despite the above, Iraq’s entry into the global economic space through the World Trade Organization and its dealings with international groups are on conditions that apply to everyone from a formal standpoint,
at a time when the world is still divided between the countries of the North and South, or the countries of the advanced industrial center and the developing periphery,
so what Iraq has to do is A choice to leave the international isolation that it inherited since the blockade that began in 1990, which placed Iraq under the penalty of Chapter Seven of the United Nations Charter or its appendices,
a chapter whose effects still provide a negative economic environment that is hostile to development and perhaps obstructive to natural integration into the global market.
This chapter prohibits levels of investment in advanced technology or facilitated interaction with the world due to the restrictions it imposes on our country, being one of the high-risk countries that threaten world peace, and permitting the use of force against it, which is an unfortunate legacy for the civilization of Mesopotamia, despite the disappearance of the objective reasons that imposed the economic blockade.
Accordingly, it is imposed on Iraq.
Noting that Iraq’s accession to regional economic zones, such as the Greater Arab Free Trade Area and other economic agreements within the scope of the Arab League or other forms of regional integration and amalgamation, must take into account the implementation of the provisions contained in and before the World Trade Organization Agreement.
The GATT Agreement, both of which have become a binding restriction on the implementation of trade agreements.
Thus, any trade facilities within the framework of regional agreements become useless or valuable if they are less than the facilities provided within the framework of the World Trade Organization.
In conclusion, Iraq's remaining isolated from its international environment will cost it a lot due to its loss of regulatory advantages and opportunities, technological and legal benefits, and other areas in investment and arbitration, which are opportunities that isolation from the world does not provide for it and does not enable a gradual transformation into a group of stable and low-risk countries, a transformation that encourages cooperation.
International cooperation in a safe global investment and trade environment, provided that effective development is initiated based on the Strong Impetus programme.
Observations 414 Added 07/16/2024 - 10:36 AM
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articles
Mazhar Muhammad Saleh
Since 2003, Iraq has adopted broad policies of openness towards the world and sought to establish important economic and legislative rules that operate according to the mechanisms of the market system, most of which helped improve Iraq’s foreign trade, after an economic blockade that lasted for more than a decade and a half, which led to the marginalization of Iraq on the map of the economic system. Global and depriving it of opportunities for investment, progress, development and technological knowledge that should have helped it face the rapid developments and developments that international markets have taken place and their competitive capabilities have changed dramatically over the past two decades at least.
Thus, Iraq was isolated from its international environment in the midst of a world swept by the currents of mergers of its companies, the liberalization and integration of its markets, especially financial ones, and the rule of the new liberal doctrine, which required broad economic transformations in the field of information technology that became compatible with the internationalization of productive activity through the role that multinational companies began to play and the increasing competitive advantage of products that began Generated by world markets.
Despite this, we find in the integration of financial markets, the value of whose assets have exceeded 850 trillion dollars, that it is the main title of financial globalization and the main focus of hegemony in the global neoliberal economy, and at the same time it represents the path of transition in the axes of international trade and the introduction to the transformation from the scope of the signed GATT agreement.
In the year 1948, the World Trade Organization (WTO) agreement was concluded, as the latter focused on regulating a wide spectrum of trade in services, especially financial services, and its annexes were called the GATS Agreement in 1994, based on the Uruguay Round.
At a time when the gross product of about 192 economies in the world does not exceed $83 trillion annually at the present time (and the value of global trade in goods and services has also not increased annually, except by less than a third of the aforementioned global output), we find that trade in currency conversion and speculation in it Short-term capital movements exceed about four and a half trillion dollars daily in the international monetary and financial markets, which is a financial speculative trade whose annual total exceeds more than fifty times the total global trade in goods and services activity.
In the midst of these changes in the international commercial and financial space, Iraq moved to important organizational levels in transitioning to a market economy to break the effects of its international isolation by engaging in a strong area of economic liberalism, which focused on liberalizing the areas of Iraq’s foreign trade of goods and services and ways of financing them, despite The fluctuation of its organization, as well as the development and expansion of areas of progress occurring in some financial services and improving the foreign investment environment through banking and investment legal legislation and the Central Bank Law, allowing foreign banks to operate in Iraq and allowing the transfer of capital and currency in a way that serves Iraq’s openness to the world in economic conditions.
Central rentierism is difficult to understand in terms of market liberalism, which nevertheless has provided positive opportunities and promising legal and regulatory foundations for the Iraqi business environment.
However, all of this is not enough to put Iraq on the path of international economic competition.
There are still more than five thousand legislative texts obstructing economic freedom and market activity, which are being studied by legal circles and which, as the case may be, are amended so that Iraq can integrate into international trade and investment and prepare it to join The World Trade Organization according to the terms of its membership so that our country obtains the most favored nation condition and the principle of national treatment.
However, one of the paradoxes of accession centers on the issues of oil and agriculture, in addition to other problems of accession.
While production in the oil sector dominates approximately 50% of the components of Iraq’s gross domestic product, that sector only uses 2% of the Iraqi labor force, and the country’s exports of crude oil and its revenues constitute the almost absolute majority of total exports and budget revenues.
The public and the country's foreign exchange earnings. In view of all of this, the World Trade Organization excludes crude oil as a commodity within the group of crude commodities that are traded internationally, which still constitutes the essence of the contradiction in Iraq’s accession to that organization, which excludes crude oil.
If the World Trade Organization allowed oil to be taken into account, the price would be left to be determined by global supply and demand, away from the cartel or consumer groups represented by the International Energy Organization and its lines and programs in rationalizing demand for oil.
Or away from the cartel or groupings of producers represented by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and its role in regulating production and influencing prices, which set price and quantitative restrictions on a commercial commodity, but strategic and political at the same time, which is the driving force of Iraq’s foreign trade.
On the other side of the Iraqi economy, we find the agricultural sector, which includes less than a third of the Iraqi population and about 22% of the Iraqi labor force, and contributes to the gross domestic product only by a rate not exceeding 5%, making the country an almost net importer of food or agricultural commodities, from which the value of the country’s imports exceeds 14 billion dollars annually, and this important sector, which has been subjected to militarization and neglect over the past thirty years, does not have sufficient capabilities to provide food security in terms of grains or agricultural production requirements after the shrinkage of productive agricultural areas due to desertification, salinization, and the recent water crisis that eliminated more than 50% of Lands intended for agriculture are in addition to the deterioration of the agricultural infrastructure, of which the state controls 83% of its components as a public good.
Here, the agricultural sector contrasts with the oil sector structurally in terms of openness to the global market, with two different wings in terms of the impact of commercial benefits and costs. International market forces or global supply and demand have become strongly controlling, whether in the demand for oil and its impact on the value of Iraqi exports or in the supply of foodstuffs and its impact on the cost of Iraq’s imports from them.
When referring to the philosophy of reducing customs restrictions by 24% and abolishing non-customs restrictions, which are the conditions imposed by the World Trade Organization on the member state of the group of developing countries to implement and implement within a period of six years from the date of accession, in addition to reducing agricultural support by 13.3% during the period Ten years after joining.
We find that these regulatory conditions of the World Trade Organization collide with the terms and conditions of the agricultural market and the global food stock exchange itself.
If we look at the agricultural monopolies in the world and the deterioration of agricultural development in Iraq, we find a real threat to national food security that restricts the country from joining the organization unless it is preceded by starting or proceeding with an agricultural program for self-sufficiency immediately.
We will really need a green revolution similar to what Mexico and many Latin American countries did it. Especially if we know that there are between 3 to 6 major monopolistic companies in the world that control 80 to 90% of agricultural crop trade and control prices and quantities such as wheat, sugar, tea, coffee, cotton, jute...etc. At a time when ten multinational companies still dominate a third of the production and trade of seeds and pesticides in the world.
Despite the above, Iraq’s entry into the global economic space through the World Trade Organization and its dealings with international groups are on conditions that apply to everyone from a formal standpoint,
at a time when the world is still divided between the countries of the North and South, or the countries of the advanced industrial center and the developing periphery,
so what Iraq has to do is A choice to leave the international isolation that it inherited since the blockade that began in 1990, which placed Iraq under the penalty of Chapter Seven of the United Nations Charter or its appendices,
a chapter whose effects still provide a negative economic environment that is hostile to development and perhaps obstructive to natural integration into the global market.
This chapter prohibits levels of investment in advanced technology or facilitated interaction with the world due to the restrictions it imposes on our country, being one of the high-risk countries that threaten world peace, and permitting the use of force against it, which is an unfortunate legacy for the civilization of Mesopotamia, despite the disappearance of the objective reasons that imposed the economic blockade.
Accordingly, it is imposed on Iraq.
Noting that Iraq’s accession to regional economic zones, such as the Greater Arab Free Trade Area and other economic agreements within the scope of the Arab League or other forms of regional integration and amalgamation, must take into account the implementation of the provisions contained in and before the World Trade Organization Agreement.
The GATT Agreement, both of which have become a binding restriction on the implementation of trade agreements.
Thus, any trade facilities within the framework of regional agreements become useless or valuable if they are less than the facilities provided within the framework of the World Trade Organization.
In conclusion, Iraq's remaining isolated from its international environment will cost it a lot due to its loss of regulatory advantages and opportunities, technological and legal benefits, and other areas in investment and arbitration, which are opportunities that isolation from the world does not provide for it and does not enable a gradual transformation into a group of stable and low-risk countries, a transformation that encourages cooperation.
International cooperation in a safe global investment and trade environment, provided that effective development is initiated based on the Strong Impetus programme.
Observations 414 Added 07/16/2024 - 10:36 AM
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]
