Maher Johan, Undersecretary of the Iraqi Ministry of Planning, revealed in statements released by the Iraqi News Agency that the unemployment rate in Iraq is between 13 and 15% (which represents approximately 7 million unemployed ), while the poverty rate is 22%. percent (equivalent to about 10 million people) in a country of over 43 million people.
These percentages, according to experts and observers, seem usual and do not reflect anything new, given the overlapping and accumulating crises from which the country suffers on the political, security, economic and administrative levels, which negatively affect the various areas of development and improving the service and living conditions of citizens, which results in an exacerbation of unemployment and poverty rates.
poverty prevalence factors
The situation has worsened in light of the successive economic crises of recent years, due to the war against the terrorist organization ISIS and the destruction it has left behind, the crisis of the displaced, the emergence of the pandemic of Corona and then the war in Ukraine, as well as the scourge of administrative corruption, the waste of public money, the weakness of the mechanisms of transparency and accountability, and the repercussions of the phenomenon Climate change which affects one of the sectors the most vital of the country, namely agriculture, livestock and fishing.
And the Iraqi Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs announced, in the summer of 2022, that 9 million citizens were living below the poverty line.
Even before the Corona pandemic crisis, particularly in 2019, Iraqi authorities released data indicating that the poverty rate in the country stood at 22.5%.
Observers believe that Iraq’s poverty rate is not decreasing, but could rather increase over the next few years, if its causes are not addressed.
What is required?
Raed Al-Azzawi, director of the Al-Amsar Center for Strategic and Economic Studies, said in an interview with Sky News Arabia:
This percentage is not surprising, nor new, although it is of course significant, and it constitutes about a quarter of the population of Iraq, or between 12 and 15 million citizens who suffer from poverty, which is a scourge widespread in the country, despite swimming on seas of oil, gas, minerals and different natural wealth. This requires considerable work by the government to reduce and control the catastrophic rate, especially since unemployment rates are high, which contributes to the high rate of poverty, due to the lack of employment opportunities, investment companies, the spread of corruption, etc. The new government rightly says that at the top of its agenda is the fight against corruption, poverty, unemployment and the deterioration of services, which Iraqis are waiting to be translated. The irony is that the scourges poverty and unemployment are more concentrated in the southern governorates, despite the fact that they hold the largest share of oil production on which the Iraqi budget depends. The budget, which is expected to be approved soon, and which is backed by a very large financial abundance with a surplus amounting to more than 115 billion dollars, can undoubtedly help the government to implement its ambitious program to combat against poverty and unemployment and to limit their exacerbation. .
To deal with the poverty that kills a large part of Iraqis, the researcher indicates several possible steps:
Strengthen administrative decentralization and give more opportunities and initiatives to the various governorates to carry out development projects, and make foreign investment a local partner, in order to increase employment rates and production national. Adopt strict and binding laws to fight corruption, hold the corrupt accountable and bring them to justice, and recover the huge looted funds. To spread transparency, which is the basis of success in all government and administrative work, which we lack in Iraq, because many government and investment projects and plans lack it, because most of them are fake projects and reluctant that have not been completed, and billions of dollars have been wasted under their cover, which could have been used to face poverty and unemployment and to develop the country and develop its economic and service reality. Involve international organizations in monitoring the general performance of local and foreign companies investing in the country, to fight corruption and waste, with the need to prioritize banking sector reform as there is no real digitalization in Iraq, in the sense that you know where the money comes from, where it goes and how it is spent and used, with the aim of besieging the corruption which is the main cause of poverty and unemployment . Faced with the challenges of the interference of political parties and the armed forces in the various affairs of governance and administration, which Al-Sudani announced to tackle since the beginning of his assumption of the presidency of the government, and c This is what counts for him in the fight against corruption through a set of concrete measures on the ground, with the aim of improving the living and economic reality of the Iraqi citizen.
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