Baghdad business expo marks milestone for Iraq
Baghdad business expo marks milestone for Iraq
Nation’s firms display products but still must rely on heavy security
Chicago Tribune
BAGHDAD — The last time organizers tried to stage a business convention in Baghdad, it had to be called off in a hurry because a mortar round exploded near the venue shortly before it was set to open.
That was in April 2004, just as Iraq was beginning its descent into chaos. The idea of staging a business event at any point since then has been unthinkable.
So the fact that the first Baghdad Business-to-Business Expo went ahead at all last weekend marks something of a milestone in Iraq’s struggle to return to normalcy. Some 260 companies, most of them Iraqi, booked stands at the show, at the heavily guarded Rasheed Hotel inside the fortified Green Zone.
It wasn’t exactly a normal business convention. Among the products on display were a $250,000 armored personnel carrier designed by a South African company for use in Iraq, and an $8,000 hand-held device made in the U.S. that alerts its owner to the presence of explosives nearby.
Body searches, X-ray
To reach the hotel, visitors had to pass through 10 different checkpoints, submitting to several body searches, a full body X-ray and a bomb-sniffing dog. It took four days for the display merchandise to be cleared by the U.S. military and transported into the zone.Nonetheless, organizers hoped the convention will send the message that Baghdad is now safer and open for business.
“This year will be the year that we will significantly improve business activity in Baghdad,” predicted Raad Ommar, head of the Iraqi American Chamber of Commerce and Industry, which hosted the event.
The show’s slogan, “Buy Iraqi First,” illustrated how much expectations have been lowered since the first attempt to organize the event in 2004. Then, the goal was to promote foreign investment in Iraq, and dozens of international companies were due to attend.
This time, the stands were occupied mostly by Iraqi firms seeking markets for their goods. The State Company for Food Industry was there, promoting an Iraqi cola called Yaffa, as was the State Company for Tobacco and Cigarettes displaying Iraqi-made Sumer cigarettes.
Iraqi businesses have been hard hit by the five years of turmoil since the U.S. invasion, and not only because of the violence.
The collapse of Saddam Hussein’s quasi-socialist regime and the lifting of 12 years of sanctions brought imports flooding into the country, many of them cheaper than locally made goods.
The state-owned Modern Paint Industries Co. has seen its production fall to 10 percent of prewar levels because of competition from imports and because the government withdrew the support it used to offer, said General Manager Hassan Shandal, who was hoping to alert companies involved in reconstruction projects to the existence of Iraqi paint.
“Under Saddam, the government used to force all the ministries to buy our paint. Even in the military it was compulsory for all units to buy from us. Now, not even one ministry buys from us,” he said. “It’s a free market now.”
‘Year of Reconstruction’
Iraq also had a vibrant private sector that has been decimated by the post-invasion violence. About 75 percent of the 10,500 businessmen registered with the Iraqi-American Chamber of Commerce have fled the country, according to Ommar. “They’re the ones who’ve got the money,” he said. “Some have invested their money in neighboring countries.”The Iraqi government has declared 2008 the “Year of Reconstruction,” and the U.S. military hopes to encourage firms engaged in reconstruction to buy Iraqi products, as a way of kick-starting the Iraqi economy.
Security remains a problem, Ommar concedes, but he believes Baghdad is not as dangerous as it seems.
And after five years of devastation, the city is ripe for a takeoff, he said. “It’s a matter of changing perceptions,” he said. “Baghdad could boom just like that, overnight. It wouldn’t take much.”