********** Mnt Goat News Brief for Wednesday Sept. 14th

9/14/2016



​Hi Everyone,

Many are still confused as to what and when are the Iraq holidays. Really? After all these years of dealing with Iraq you still don’t know the holidays? Are you even sure about your intel and many wonder since you can’t even get something simple like the holidays correct.

​So let me clarify.

Holidays and festivals are a part of all our culture, tradition and nationality for all countries throughout the world.

However like many countries, the Middle Eastern region of the world has its own cultural traditions and they may vary slightly which are largely reflected in their festivals they celebrate in a year. These festivals are many. So for celebrating they do not have strict work ethics like in the western world where you are allocated only certain number of holidays off from work. Instead most of their holidays are mostly all connected to religion somehow and since the religion and state are so closely connected together and almost 90% of the population work for the state you can see how they get so many holidays off from work.

Some of these closings are for festivals and some are for holidays.

They are celebrated to mark the birthday of religious saint or guru. The dates for these festivals keep on changing in a calendar year. Some of the religious observance is based on the sighting of the Moon. So now we are upon yet another one of these holidays and festivals celebrated in Iraq. Eid is one of the largest known holidays in the Middle East and takes on many forms.

So Eid Al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice) is now underway and began yesterday on Sunday Sept 11th and will end on Weds Sept 14th. Not much get done while on holidays so we can expect a slow week ahead for information gathering. The good news for us is that this last holiday ends today.

So now let's get down to the business of todays real news......

So what are “Smart City Solutions” we read about recently for Iraq?

The article below is not clear and does not explain it very good. How can this be good for Iraq. So here is some more information on this topic to help. Can you see how this could improve the services in Iraq and prevent corruption? Can you see what they plan to do? Of course Tamami is heading this effort. Do not confuse this with the SMART card or the Qi cards. Very different efforts.

Another recent article told us the CBI is limited the sale of dollars to its citizens who plan to travel abroad. Remember the sale of dollars is actually exchanging dinars for dollars and these dollars must come out of the CBI reserves as the banks must go to the currency auctions and purchase these dollars using dinars. We also see that they now are requiring the banks to check for a valid passport and airline ticket prior to issuing dollars. So this is just another sign that the CBI wants to tighten up the sale of the dollars anyway they can.

A 5 YEAR STRATEGIC PLAN FOR IRAQ FROM THE CBI

Everyone should go out to this site and read the 5 year Strategic Plan for Iraq from the CBI for period 2016-2020. This plan was just recently placed on the CBI website www.cbi.iq site and is very interesting and available for your viewing. In fact they want you to read it. They are flaunting this information to the public, especially the would-be foreign investor.

Why would they put the plan out to the public now?

Someone must have spent a lot of time and effort to write the plan and publish it for our reading pleasure at this point in time, but why now?

Here is the link below. Let me point out a few items to you. Please go to section on page 3, “Key Features of the Strategic Plan”.

Just copy and paste the link in your browser subject line.
http://www.cbi.iq/documents/CBI_Strategic_Plan_E.pdf

Is this not like a summary of everything we have been reading about in recent articles over the last couple years since Abadi took control as prime minister? In the past we read articles about plans to implement many of these objectives but under Maliki nothing every seemed to really come to reality and get accomplished. Now under the prime minister Abadi we know things have changed and we, as investors, must also shift our paradigm, as better days are ahead for Iraq.

Next look at their Vision statement on page 5– “Performance Excellence to Achieve Sustainable Economic Development and Prosperity for our Society and Citizens”

Folks this vision statement is right of the UN goals for sustainable development I talked about to you so many times.

Here is the link to the UN site again. Go read it again if you don’t believe me. So it seems Iraq is being lead and they are following international goals as set by the UN.

Just copy and paste the link in your browser subject line.
http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/development-agenda/

17 Goals to Transform our world! Click on the bar under Goals and they will be listed.

Seems according to their calendar there is an “International Day for Democracy” on Sept 15th. Yes that istomorrow. Is this Coincidental to the CBI now publishing this document on Sustainability initiatives for Iraq?

JUST ASKING!

Back to the 5 year Strategic Plan for Iraq from the CBI-

Now go to page 11 of the 5 year Strategic Plan for Iraq from the CBI and read under one of their Business Objectives to have a “Stable and Steady Exchange Rate”. What do you read over to the right under Initiative and Projects in order to meet this Objective.

You read that they want to “Withdraw excessive cash from the market and to regulate sufficient amount of banknotes”. Did we not just read last week that there is shortage of cash in the market? This was the second article on this topic. Did we not read also that they want to shrink the amount of banknotes now in circulation from 30 trillion to 1 trillion dinars?

I quote from an October 3rd 2013 article – “as saying that 2014 will witness the deletion of zeros from the Iraqi currency. He noted that the deletion will occur in coordination with the CBI, and that as a result of the project, the number of banknotes in circulation will be reduced from 4 billion to 1 billion.(that is in terms of dollars worth of IQD and this article remember was in 2003. Now we are in 2016)

I quote from the March 3rd 2015 article – “to withdraw 30 trillion dinars currently used in the Iraqi market then getting rid of them and replace them with new currency.”

If we continue reading under Initiatives and Projects we find they want to “Introduce Convertible New Currencies”. What does this mean to us?

It means they are going to someday launch the new lower denominations and coins. Don’t forget about the coins. Remember in order to launch these coins they must have a significantly higher value at least equal to the precious metals in the coins. If not the black market will melt the coins down for the value of the metals contained within them and the project will fail…again. Yes they already tried launching coins and it failed for this very reason. The CBI told us in article in the past they will not make the same mistake again.

Next we see another initiative of Authorise Responsible Department(s) to Perform and Utilize their Tasks and Duties in Purchasing and Selling of Foreign Currencies and Investment Tools.

I think this last initiative is one of those WOW initiatives. Just today they announced they would restrict the selling of the dollars to citizens for travel plans and limit it to $5,000 and $3,000 accordingly. This fits perfectly into this initiative and so we see right in front of our faces these goals being implemented.

We also know they now have a law to restrict and control street vendors with currency exchanges (one of the problems they had in controlling the IQD rate). See also another link on the CBI site for a PDF of these vendors that did not yet meet the regulations under PDF link called: Exchange companies that have been shut off from the sale and purchase of foreign currencies window

Now these currency vendors must go through a licensing process and follow a set of strict rules.

My point is I am not making this stuff up folks. I find it quite amazing how this is all coming together nicely.

Also another WOW is the selling of Investment tools. Could this be the ISX and the various Bond programs they are talking about? Could this be the loan programs they have planned for small businesses and the many reconstruction project where foreign investors are welcomed into Iraq to help rebuild shopping malls, business offices etc.

Folks I could go on and on. You can read the remainder of the Initiatives and Projects on your own but I will add these are EXACTLY what we have been seeing since Abadi took office as prime minister. These are all part of his Economic and Financial Reforms. Read them for yourselves. I am not making this stuff up. No Rumors, No Hype just the FACTS.

So if anyone of these so called intel “gurus” tells you they have RV’s because they announced the are now going to implement their Monetary or Financial Reforms you should just laugh at them and look the other way because they have no idea what they are talking about. Read my lips – THE ECONOMIC AND FINANICAL REFORMS ARE ALMOST ALL COMPLETED. What do you think they have been doing since 2014 once Maliki and his goons were neutered? Of course like any democracy these reforms will be ongoing for many and many years to come. In reality they never stop but when does Iraq meet it goals? This is why the CBI now issued this 5 year Strategic Plan for Iraq from the CBI. This is now almost a summary of what they already did and not so much what they intend to do in the future. Get it?

I want to point out one last item to you. If you did go to the CBI website www.CBI.IQ you will notice a very large sky scraper building. This is the newly planned CBI building on the Tigris River in Baghdad. It is not yet built but planned for opening in 2020 just 4 years from now. Is this really the war torn Iraq we know today?

Just copy and paste the link in your browser subject line.

http://www.zaha-hadid.com/architecture/central-bank-of-iraq/

Articles follow:
Smart city system to end the bureaucracy
{Baghdad} Euphrates News announced its intention to apply the Baghdad governorate smart city system to end the bureaucracy in government departments.

A statement by the Baghdad governorate agency {Euphrates News} received a copy of " The governor of Baghdad , Ali al - Tamimi held a lengthy meeting with the Organization of {AGI} German to discuss the signing of a joint memorandum of understanding for the application of smart city system in the capital."

Tamimi said during a meeting with the German company 's delegation that " the province Baghdad plans to sign a memorandum of understanding with the German organization for the application of smart city system in the capital. "

He said , " we seek to develop actually administrative in the capital to raise a large number of administrative episodes straining citizen Baghdadi during the accomplished transactions in government circles as well as the bureaucracy, which had exhausted citizens.

Article Ends

About Smart City Systems

Smart City Systems (SCS) offers you a complete set of HRMS Software services including HR and Payroll, Employee Self Service, Recruitment Software, Performance Appraisal, HR Budgeting and Manpower Planning, Training Management, Software as a Service and Payroll Outsource Service. We see it as an important part of our service to understand our customer's requirements and proactively meet their needs. Our foresight has contributed much to our success. We aim "Complete Customer Satisfaction". Smart City Systems has over 10 years of experience in providing HRMS Solutions in the middle east backed up by excellent team comprising of HRMS Functional Consultants, Implementation and Support Team.

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http://www.urenio.org/2016/04/08/de-smart-city-standardization-roadmap/
http://smartcitysystems.com/content/default.aspx?categorycode=CTG000000003





Increase Control Over sale of dollar in Iraq

The central bank determines the limits for sale of the dollar to $ 5000 for citzens across the bank Rafidain and Rasheed.
9/13/2016
Baghdad/tomorrow Press

An informed source at the Central Bank of Iraq, Tuesday, for the latter, seeking to determine the amount of limit to $ 5000 sold to citizens in a bank of good government and .Mesopotamia exclusively while the remaining amount limit of $ 3000 dollars in private banks

The source said, for “tomorrow press,” that “the central bank boosted bank balance Rafidain and Rasheed dollar in order to direct the sale of hard currency from the dollar to citizens traveling outside of Iraq.”

The source added, “The central bank is seeking to determine the amount of the purchase b ($ 5,000) only every citizen,” adding that “the dollar sale remains at the exchange of $ 1200 dinars per dollar, and the remaining quantity sold in the private banks are ($ 3,000), in order to strengthen control over the sale of the dollar.

The source explained that “the dollar sold is for the Iraqi citizens traveling abroad to cover their travel expenses,” noting that “the central bank controls and instructions to sell dollar for the citizen and of providing valid passport is valid travel with ticket enhanced one of the supporting documents.”

The Iraqi Central Bank announced on Tuesday (September 6), the processing bank Rafidain and Rasheed exchange of foreign currency to the dollar expansion of cash sales outlets to citizens via their branches in the capital Baghdad and the provinces.

Articles End

Just in case you are wondering I am still on the path of window from Sept 1st 2016 to January 2017 to see a significant rise in the value of the IQD. I firmly expect to see between now and January to see the launching of the lower denominations (but no coins yet). When the CBI does launch the new notes (lower denominations) the IQD value will not change. I repeat will not change and the swap (or exchange) by the citizens within Iraq will be a 1:1 meaning the value will be a swap of 1 dollar value for something worth one dollar value. example: one $25,000 note work $25 USD today will be worth the same $25 USD in the lower denominations.

When can we expect a value change?

I am being told by my CBI contact that if all goes according to plan we can expect a 90 cents to $1.17 USD rate change within a couple weeks after the newer notes are launched, but only when it is launched AND finally moved to the international exchanges. At this time the plan now is that the currency will be on a float and will no longer be stickily pegged to the USD (as it is today). Instead they plan to move it to a "basket of currencies".

Won't all the hedge funds and investors scoop up the currency and cause a rush on it?

Yes - I am told this may happen and the rate could go very high over a period of time. The float, however, will be a "fixed" float meaning it will have a limit. They are not telling me the limit as it is sensitive information...of course. But we did hear Dr Shabibi say in the past that the IQD could sustain up to a value of $16 USD per dinar. This is all we know as FACTUAL and so I will not spread any rumors, hype or speculation on the future value of the dinar.

No Rumors, No Hype, just the FACTS, as always!

Till next time…. Auf Wiedersehen!
Peace and Luv To Ya All,
Mnt Goat