Shafaq News- Baghdad
The Central Bank of Iraq (CBI) sold about $884 billion in foreign currency between 2006 and 2025, with sales varying sharply every year, an economy expert told Shafaq News on Monday.
Al-Obaidi noted that sales peaked in the 2022–2025 period, reaching about $265 billion, nearly 30% of the CBI’s total currency sales during those years, with an annual average of around $66 billion. He added that 2025 recorded the highest yearly level of dollar sales at about $80 billion, marking the first time the central bank’s currency sales have exceeded that level since 2003.
Despite tighter scrutiny, restrictions, and new mechanisms applied to external transfer operations in 2025, those measures failed to curb the rapid growth in dollar sales used to finance foreign trade, he said, reflecting continued strong demand for foreign currency.
According to Al-Obeidi, the 2022-2025 period, which posted the highest dollar sales, also recorded the widest gap between the official exchange rate and the parallel market rate. The average gap during those years reached about 13.67%. Over the past 20 years, the difference between the official rate and the parallel market rate exceeded 6% only during 2014-2017, while the narrowest gap came in 2018-2021, averaging 2.28%.
He expected foreign currency sales to shift in 2026 with the implementation of the ASYCUDA system and the adoption of a pre-calculated customs tariff mechanism, in addition to geopolitical and economic changes in the region, as sales could fall by as much as 30% compared with previous years.
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“The parallel market exchange rate and the volume of foreign currency sold depend mainly on supply and demand, and the increase in dollar supply in recent years was not enough to contain high demand.” Al-Obaidi called for efforts to focus on managing demand for dollars by tightening control over border crossings, regulating imports of goods that consume the largest share of foreign currency, and changing consumption patterns to reduce demand and strengthen control over the parallel market exchange rate.’
On inflation, he said it may be a more important indicator than the parallel market exchange rate. However, the Planning Ministry data showed that the dinar’s decline in the parallel market in recent years, inflation remained low, reaching around 0% in 2025, according to Planning Ministry data.
He stressed the need for a more accurate analysis of the data to identify the factors affecting commodity prices in the market, as well as to examine why central bank sales rose to these levels despite tighter oversight, and whether the problem lies in audit mechanisms or in increased import demand.