PM's Advisor: Foreign workers transfer 600 million dollars annually outside Iraq

Baghdad-INA 

Advisor to the Prime Minister for Financial Affairs, Mudhar Muhammad Salih, confirmed today, Friday, that foreign workers transfer 600 million dollars annually outside Iraq and work in sectors with limited productivity, while actual unemployment in Iraq is 16% of the total workforce.

Salih told the Iraqi News Agency (INA): "Within the general economic framework and in principle, Iraq is committed to the provisions of Article Eight of the International Monetary Fund agreement, which requires liberalization of the current account of the Iraqi balance of payments, which means freedom of import and export of goods and services and freedom of transferring the returns of workers." of foreign workers and the returns of foreign capital working in our country.

Salih added, "The legal foreign workers working in Iraq currently enjoy the freedom to transfer their dues from wages and salaries to their home countries (after paying taxes and legal fees), but in return, foreign countries must allow Iraqi workers abroad to transfer their dues to Iraq.".

And he continued, "Despite the foregoing, our labor market is very vague in its customs and traditions, at a time when actual unemployment in Iraq is 16% out of the total labor force out of the economically active population of 6 million workers in the labor market except for government employees, We find that the country is teeming with hundreds of thousands of foreign workers, most of whom work in the service sector, which is limited in productivity and weak in generating added value, which is easily compensated by Iraqi labor.

He stated, "This means transferring $600 million of these people to productive businesses of limited added value annually in exchange for widespread unemployment, which constitutes a drain on the country's financial resources and savings.".

He pointed out, "Unfortunately, the work culture in our country is still dominated by a lot of transcendence from performing works that are honorable in principle, but social traditions and customs refuse to enter their areas of work, which caused the foreign worker to replace the national worker in the labor market, which is a social dilemma inherited in many countries." One of the areas of work, especially service, is more than an economic dilemma.