Only 28% of public, state-owned companies are operating and making profits, Official

Shafaq News / The Prime Minister’s financial advisor, Mazhar Muhammad Saleh, revealed on Saturday that only 28% of public or state-owned companies are operating and making profits.

The semi-official Al-Sabah newspaper quoted Saleh as saying “since 2003, the productive sector of the government has been suspended and neglected… Among 173 public or state-owned companies, 72% of them are losing…more than 20% of those companies were out of work due to the second Gulf War.”

He pointed out that “the profitable public companies are those of the oil sector that took quasi-monopoly advantages by obtaining raw materials and the access to marketing their products.

The financial Advisor added that "for eighteen years, about 400 thousand workers are receiving monthly salaries without working…it is not their fault, but the negligence and the wrong economic policy that depends on oil is the main reason.”

Iraq is the second–largest crude oil producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) after Saudi Arabia, and it holds the world’s fifth–largest proved crude oil reserves.

Iraq’s economy is heavily dependent on crude oil export revenues. In 2017, crude oil export revenue accounted for an estimated 89% of Iraq’s total government revenues, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF).