Sinan al-Shabibi: Immortalizing the legacy of Iraq’s best. By Yasar Al-Maleki *

In Iraqi folklore, Saturday is both an ominous and auspicious day. Iraqis say it is Awwad —“repetitive” — and hence they prefer to postpone taking important decisions to other days of the week. For many Iraqis this week, the news of Dr. Sinan al-Shabibi’s unfortunate passing on Saturday, Jan. 8 could not have come on a worse day. While the loss of one of Iraq’s last firmly inde

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Brief Structural Analysis of the Original Iraqi 2021 Federal Budget, its Subsequent Amendments, Alignment with the White Paper and Break-Even Oil Price: By Hashim Al-Ali *

Introduction The Federal 2021 budget has been prepared by MOF and has been submitted to the council of ministers (COM), at the beginning of the budget year (January 2021). The COM has discussed and approved the draft budget and submitted to the council of representatives (COR), for further discussion and final approval. It has been taken about four months for the COR to comple

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Review and assessment of US-Aid project on establishing the Iraq Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) at the Ministry of Finance

Contents Executive summary 3 INTRODUCTION 7 2.1.      FMIS and the World implementation experience   7 2.2.      Iraq Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) Implementation Experience (post 2003 period).  9 2.3.      Lesson Learned   11 Government Enterprise Resource Planning (GERP) 12 3.1.      GERP High Level Overview    13 3.2.      Ira

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James Baker’s Double Life – Bush’s special envoy has a private interest in Iraqi debt, documents reveal. By Naomi Klein *

When President Bush appointed former Secretary of State James Baker III as his envoy on Iraq’s debt on December 5, 2003, he called Baker’s job “a noble mission.” At the time, there was widespread concern about whether Baker’s extensive business dealings in the Middle East would compromise that mission, which is to meet with heads of state and persuade them to forgive the debts

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