Comment: The GDP of Kurdistan

Your observations are entirely correct. I am, by profession, a business consultant and would never deal with any government who could not tell me the GDP of its country. I, myself, was approached recently by a trusted friend who wanted me to negotiate with British construction companies so that he might create buildings in South Kurdistan.

I declined the invitation to get involved because the KRG expected the construction companies to make the investment with no guarantee of a sale at the end of construction. This is not how western business works. I also pointed out how difficult it would be for a company to trust a regime that is made up of two family owned parties who were fighting each other not so long ago and who, even when the governments were “merged” into one, clung onto their seperate armed peshmerga militias.

Then I was approached about exporting western cars to Kurdistan. I declined this invitation because I found out that a close member of the Barzani family was in the same business. Any competition would be doomed to fail in light of a Barzani venture.

Until the party nepotism stops and qualified people are put into appropriate positions within government and the civil service no sensible company should invest in that situation. Running an economy is not difficult, as Margaret Thatcher put it, it is like running a “household budget”. If you can afford something buy it, if not then you cannot buy it. Borrowing should occur only in emergencies. I actually suspect the KRG is now in the dangerous position of getting too used to aid from America.