Investment law in Kurdistan region
The Kurdistan Region of Iraq has significantly growth, particularly since collapsed of the Ba’athist regime in 2003. The KRG has benefited from the huge opening in relations with the international community and a wide range of economic activity, which has played an important role in attracting foreign investors, international enterprises, public and private sector companies to Kurdistan. To facilitate this development, the KRG has issued several laws, including Kurdistan Regional Government’s investment law, oil and gas law, which pave a way for private sector to become a starter of free economic market. In 2006, the Kurdistan Parliament issued a law that assisting foreign investors in the Kurdistan Region to do their investment in the region freely. The law even allows foreigners to become property owners for 10 years without taxes, and to work easily on their capitals and benefits they achieve from projects. According to the law, foreign investors have rights to own a company of their own. Foreign investors have the right to bring foreign workers and also the workers have rights to send money they earn to their own countries.
Investment in Kurdistan region
According to board of investment statistics, the size of investment in the Kurdistan Region has reached more than 58 billion and 848 million dollars over the past 15 years, and the number of investment projects has reached 991, which 85% local, 8.66% foreign investment and 6.35% joint projects. The most investments have been made in Erbil province, which is more than 35 billion dollars, followed by Sulaimaniyah, which is 16 billion dollars, and more than 6 billion dollars have been invested in Duhok. The UAE has the most investments in the Kurdistan Region, Turkey and Lebanon is the second and third states have investments in KRI. Investment, whether local or foreign, is one of new features of economic growth and private sector participation in renewal of economic infrastructure, in a way that many countries have realized better development by taking advantage of local and foreign investments that have been facilitated by their laws for investment. However, investors are aiming for profit, therefore political and economic stability and the presence of large oil reserves in Kurdistan may be a major reason for investment, especially foreign investment. To take advantage of the experience of other countries, we see that the UAE has seen the most economic growth, but the UAE’s laws have not made it easy for foreign investors to do so.
Investment and its impact on Kurdistan’s economic growth
