Iraq and the World Trade Organization: Assessing the opportunity cost of joining.

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Iraq and the World Trade Organization: Assessing the opportunity cost of joining. 
The appearance of Mohammed Saleh 

Since 2003, Iraq has adopted 
wide-ranging policies towards the world and sought to establish important economic and legislative bases that operate according to the mechanisms of the market system. Most of them helped improve Iraq's foreign trade after an economic siege that lasted more than a decade. The global economic system and the lack of investment opportunities, progress, development and technological know-how that should have enabled it to cope with the rapid developments and developments in the international markets and have changed its competitiveness in the last two decades at least.
Thus, Iraq was isolated from its international environment in the midst of a world swept by the currents of the integration of its companies and the liberalization of its markets and its integration, especially financial ones, and the supremacy of the neo-liberal doctrine, which necessitated large economic transformations in the field of informatics which became congruent with the activity of multinational companies. Generated by world markets.
However, in the integration of financial markets, whose assets have increased to 850 trillion dollars, is the main address of financial globalization and the main focus of the global neoliberal economy. At the same time, there is a shift in the international trade axes and the introduction of the transition from the GATT In 1948 to the World Trade Organization (WTO), where the latter was involved in organizing a broad spectrum of trade in services, especially financial services, which were named after the GATS in 1994 on the basis of the Uruguay Round. 
At a time when the total output and about 192 economies in the world
$ 83 trillion a year at present (as well as the value of world trade of goods and services each year is only less than one-third of the world output mentioned), we find that trade in currency conversion and speculation and short-term capital movements are more than about $ 4 and a half trillion dollars a day in the markets Monetary and financial international trading is a financial speculation that exceeds the annual total of more than fifty times the total world trade in the activity of goods and services. 

In the midst of these changes in the international commercial and financial space, Iraq has moved to important organizational levels in the transition to a market economy to break the effects of its international isolation by engaging in a strong area of ​​economic liberalism that focused on liberalizing Iraq's foreign trade and goods and services and financing, As well as the development and expansion of areas of progress in some financial services and improve the environment of foreign investment through the legislation of banking and investment law and the Central Bank, allowing foreign banks to work in Iraq and allows the transfer of capital and currency and n The opening of Iraq to the world in the conditions of a centralized rent economy serves to make market liberal understanding more conducive to providing positive opportunities and legal and regulatory foundations for the Iraqi business environment.
However, all this is not enough to put Iraq on the path of international economic competition. There are still more than five thousand texts of legislative impediment to economic freedom and market activity, which the legal circles study and which should be amended to enable Iraq to integrate into international trade and investment and prepare to join The World Trade Organization (WTO) in accordance with the terms of its membership in order for our country to obtain the condition of the most favored state and the principle of national treatment. 
But the paradoxes of accession are oil and agriculture, as well as other problems of accession.
While production in the oil sector dominates almost 50% of Iraq's GDP, this sector uses only 2% of the Iraqi labor force. The country's exports of crude oil and its revenues represent the absolute absolute majority of total exports, The country of foreign exchange. In this context, the World Trade Organization (WTO) rules out crude oil as a commodity within the internationally traded commodity group, which remains the core of the contradiction in Iraq's accession to that Organization, which excludes crude oil. If the World Trade Organization allowed the introduction of oil into account, the price would be determined by global supply and demand away from the cartel or consumer groups represented by the International Energy Organization and its lines and programs in rationalizing demand for oil.
On the other side of the Iraqi economy, we find the agricultural sector, which includes less than one third of the Iraqi population and about 22% of the Iraqi labor force and contribute to the gross domestic product only by not more than 5%, making the country a semi-net importer of food or agricultural commodities, 14 billion dollars a year. This important sector, which has been subjected to militarization and neglect for the past 30 years, does not have the necessary resources to provide food security from cereals or agricultural inputs after shrinking agricultural areas produced by desertification, salinization and the recent water crisis. T deleted more than 50% of the land intended for agriculture in addition to agricultural infrastructure, which dominates the state 83% of its components as a public good degradation.
Here, the agricultural sector with the oil sector is structurally opposed in the direction of openness to the global market and in two different ways in terms of the impact of trade benefits and costs.International market forces or global supply and demand have become strong, both in demand for oil and its impact on the value of Iraqi exports or in the supply of foodstuffs and their impact on the cost of Iraqi imports.
In reference to the philosophy of reducing customs restrictions by 24% and abolishing non-tariff restrictions, which are the conditions imposed by the WTO on the member country of the developing countries to work and implement them within six years from the date of accession, as well as the reduction of agricultural support by 13.3% Ten years of accession. These WTO regulatory requirements collide with the conditions and conditions of the agricultural market and the World Food Exchange itself. If we look at the agricultural monopolies in the world about the deterioration of agricultural development in Iraq, there is a real threat to the national food security that restricts the country in the case of joining the organization unless preceded by the start or the agricultural program of self-sufficiency immediately and we really will need a green revolution, Done by Mexico and many Latin American countries. Especially if we know that between 3 and 6 major monopolies in the world control 80 to 90% of the agricultural trade and control prices and quantities such as wheat, sugar, tea, coffee, cotton, jute ... etc. While 10 multinational companies still dominate one-third of the world's seed and pesticide production and trade.
In spite of the above, Iraq's entry into the global economic space through the World Trade Organization and its dealing with international groups on terms that apply to all formally at a time when the world is still divided between the North and South countries or the advanced industrial center and the developing world. An option to leave the international isolation that he inherited since the siege that began in 1990, which placed Iraq under the Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter or its aftermath, a chapter whose effects continue to create a negative economic and anti-development and possibly obstructive natural integration in the high market Mia. This chapter prohibits levels of investment in advanced technology or facilitated use of it with the world because of the restrictions imposed on our country as a high-risk country and a threat to world peace and the use of force against it in the unfortunate legacy of the civilization of Mesopotamia, despite the disappearance of the objective reasons that imposed the economic siege That Iraq's accession to regional economic zones, such as the Greater Arab Free Trade Area and other economic agreements within the Arab League or other forms of regional integration and integration, must take into account the negation The provisions of the WTO Agreement and the GATT Agreement, both of which have become binding restrictions on the implementation of trade agreements. Thus, any commercial facilities within the framework of the regional agreements become useless or valuable if they are without the facilities provided under the WTO.Noting that the accession of Iraq to regional economic zones, such as the Greater Arab Free Trade Area and other economic agreements within the Arab League or other forms of integration and regional integration, must take into account the implementation of the provisions contained in the WTO Agreement and then the GATT, which became Both are binding restrictions on the implementation of trade agreements. Thus, any commercial facilities within the framework of the regional agreements become useless or valuable if they are without the facilities provided under the WTO. Noting that the accession of Iraq to regional economic zones, such as the Greater Arab Free Trade Area and other economic agreements within the Arab League or other forms of integration and regional integration, must take into account the implementation of the provisions contained in the WTO Agreement and then the GATT, which became Both are binding restrictions on the implementation of trade agreements.Thus, any commercial facilities within the framework of the regional agreements become useless or valuable if they are without the facilities provided under the WTO.


In conclusion, the survival of Iraq isolated from the international environment will cost him a lot because of the loss of the advantages and opportunities of regulatory and technological and legal and other areas of investment and arbitration, opportunities that do not provide him isolation from the world and can not be gradually transition to a group of stable and low-risk countries, In a secure international investment and commercial environment, provided that effective development based on a strong payment program is initiated. 
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