Dr. Sami R. Al-Araji
Electricity Conference on 18/12/2010
Since the first day, we have worked in the National Investment Commission on developing the investment map to involve all ministries, in the forefront the Ministry of Electricity, by including the investment sectoral opportunities which was updated twice during the last year and the beginning of this year to play its role in the promotion of investment opportunities through conferences, seminars and meetings held by the National investment Commission inside and outside Iraq. Honestly, we have faced many obstacles which hindered activating the investment opportunities in the electricity sector as these opportunities have its own privacy in terms of production and distribution process. If one takes into consideration the projects granted by the National Investment Commission and Provinces Investment Commissions, the need for more production of electric power will be greater, especially with strategic projects such as the New City of Karbala, The cities of the Future and Al-Rasheed in Baghdad and the one- million housing units project throughout Iraq, and to overcome the difficulties of processing potential, we are dealing with this project in a special way through addressing investors and developers demand to set up production units specific to each compound and thus new opportunities will be created aside from the ones offered now.
The National Investment Commission have continued, despite all the difficulties mentioned earlier, to pay this sector a special importance to the extent that we have allocated a special file to electricity projects and follow-up directly by us, and Mr. Vice-President of the National Investment Commission as well as contributing to the committee established in the Ministry of Electricity for this purpose so facilitate all procedures relevant to investment in electricity projects.
Today we have four investment opportunities in the four provinces with a total of (2750) MW and there will be other stages to cover the needs of all provinces of the country through direct coordination between the Ministry of Electricity and the National Investment Commission. We sincerely hope that this symposium contributes to promote the this important sector which we hope will lead to the signing of a number of contracts with the participating companies to utilize their experience in this field to achieve the mutual benefit of both parties. With my sincere thanks and appreciation to His Excellency, the Minister of Electricity, and all the workers in the electricity sector and our attendees.