Ruben Anton joined GDP Global as Client Services Manager in early 2009 and has since worked closely with GDP directors to deepen his knowledge of the industry. He is an honours graduate in English T...June 14, 2010. According to The Independent, investors on the hunt for international opportunities need look no further than Kurdistan, the semi-autonomous region in the north east corner of Iraq. So delegates will be told at the country’s two-day trade and investment conference in London this week.
Some 400 people are expected to attend the event, which will be hosted by key figures from the region including the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Barham Salih, eight of his ministers and an 80-strong business delegation.
The key message is that Kurdistan is not like the rest of insurgency-torn Iraq. “People are able to do business in Kurdistan,” Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, the KRG High Representative to the UK, said. “It is peaceful, stable, and has never had an insurgency of any kind; and not a single coalition soldier or foreign citizen has been kidnapped or killed in the region.”
There are some impressive figures. The Iraqi economy is set to grow by 7.3 per cent this year and 7.9 per cent next, and Kurdistan’s even faster. The region has attracted more than $12bn (£8.3bn) in non-oil investment in the past four years, some $3.1bn from abroad. There are already 1,200 foreign companies working in the region. And although so far the majority of inward investment is from the Middle East – particularly Turkey, Lebanon and Kuwait – the KRG wants to reach out to global businesses from Europe and the US as well.
Kurdistan is principally known for oil and gas. With oil reserves estimated at 45 billion barrels, and between 6 and 8 trillion cubic metres of gas, hydrocarbons are both a major economic asset for the region, and a route to the world stage. Some 40 exploration contracts have already been let, and there are high hopes for the proposed Nabucco pipeline set to run from Azerbaijan through Turkey and on to Europe. “We are looking to join Nabucco,” Ms Rahman said. “That will allow us to play a role as part of the world’s strategic oil and gas reserves.”
But Kurdistan is not just about oil. The domestic economy is also booming, particularly the construction and retail sectors. It is difficult to overstate the deprivation from which it started, after years labouring under two sets of sanctions – from Saddam Hussein himself, and from those imposed on him by the rest of the world. “From the consumer point of view there was real poverty in the early 1990s,” Ms Rahman said. “Kurdistan was closed, so for us liberation really was liberation.”
