Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) is rising again in Iraq, The Wall Street Journal reports. The WSJ article notes General Electric’s billion-dollar contract in January, which is of course government spending, to highlight how multi-nationals are increasingly confident as the self-declared Islamic State begins to collapse.
The article also notes how FDI is projected at $4 billion for 2016, lower than the $4.8 billion in 2014 when IS captured much of northern Iraq, but encouraging. Much of this FDI is from oil, since BP, Lukoil and a number of other oil majors suggested they would up investment this year, after slashed capex saw production in some southern fields decline.
Loans, from the IMF and the International Finance Corporation, reaching up to $20 billion by the end of the decade, should assuage IOC concerns and keep oil output increasing over the next few years, despite problems with water injection in the supergiant fields of the south.
But the most interesting piece of information reported was that the Wyndham Hotel Group will be building two new hotels in Najaf before 2018, a secure southern town that sees huge influxes of religious pilgrims.
(Source: WSJ)
17 August
