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Iraq Investment Map 2020-2021 109

Most of SOEs works in low capacities for the following reasons:
1- Old machinery, equipment and production lines as most of them were provided during the
seventies and eighties of the last century.
2- Old technology that does not match the international progress in the industrial sector
3- The unreliable national power grid that can't meet the electrical needs of industrial plants.
4- Domestic market opening up to imported products, the matter that impacted the
competitiveness of the national products with prices and quality.

Consequently, MIM has adopted a plan to rehabilitate and develop most of SOEs through
partnering with Arab and foreign private sector.

The Role of Government in the Industrial Sector
MIM is aiming at rehabilitating its companies or turning them into state or private joint
stock companies and has announced a number of investment profiles for several
companies, some of which have already been won by investors in order to be
rehabilitated and operated, while issuance of investment law No. 13 for the year 2006
as amended has contributed much to reinforcing this trend.
Legal frameworks that govern the process of rehabilitating SOEs in addition to
investment law can be shown below:

State companies' law No. 22 for the year 1997as amended:
This law regulates the work of the state owned companies, the provision (15/3) of the
same law allows the state company to conclude partnership with foreign company to
implement a business that lays within the state company activities in Iraq depending on
the legal basis for the partnership contracts included in the state companies law which
gave the right to these companies to partner with Arab and foreign companies and
enterprises to implement works relevant to the state companies objectives inside Iraq.
Public sector projects that are to be rehabilitated or operated with private and mixed sector, are
covered with all privileges and guarantees prescribed in the investment law no.13 of 2006 (the
first amendment of investment law no.13 of 2006 (Article 6/B), that was added to the text of
(Article 32). The law applies to the projects agreed on and contracted before the enforcement of
this law.

Companies law No. 21 for the year 1997 as amended:
Provision No. (8) of this law allows limited companies to form projects where the state
contributes less than 25% of the capital shares.

Projects belonging to the Ministry of Industry and Minerals presented as
investment opportunities (rehabilitation projects and new projects):
Investment is based on partnership contracts with private sector according to
Article 15/third, State Companies law no. 22 in 1997 amended, contracts can enjoy
privileges in investment law no 13 amended Article 33/B.

Below, you can find the table of Available Investment Opportunities at Ministry of
Industry and Minerals that are distributed in terms of the type of the project, form of
investment and the Province the project is located on the bases of management and
production partnership, increasing the production capacity regarding rehabilitation
projects and FDI for new projects.