- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The
U.S. civil administration in Iraq intends early next year to unveil a blueprint
for privatizing Iraq's state-owned businesses in a quest to create a thriving
capitalist economy, an official said on Wednesday.
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- Thomas Foley, director of private-sector development
for the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq, was bullish about
getting Iraq's economy back on its feet, but said it was important that
corruption be stamped out in Iraqi business.
-
- In a conference call with reporters at the Pentagon,
Foley said he hoped to present to the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council
within about five to seven months a proposal on privatizing state-owned
businesses. He said he would propose the creation of an Iraqi privatization
agency to handle the process of making state-owned companies private.
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- Foley said his plan would involve about 150 of the 200
state-owned enterprises in Iraq and exclude the oil industry, electricity
assets and financial institutions such as state-owned banks and insurance
companies.
-
- Businesses in Foley's portfolio include cement companies,
fertilizer operations, a phosphate mining operation, sulfur mining and
extraction businesses, pharmaceutical companies, an airline and automobile
tire makers.
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- "Although it is a large task in Iraq, in overall
terms it's not nearly as big a task as it was in most of the eastern bloc
countries, both in terms of the number of companies and the percent of
the work force that's affected," said Foley, a private equity investor.
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- He said the percentage of the Iraqi work force employed
in the companies he was seeking to privatize was about 3 to 4 percent.
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- Foley said he was "fully confident" Iraq could
become "a thriving capitalist economy." He said he believed estimates
that placed Iraqi unemployment at 50 to 60 percent were too high.
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- Corruption in Iraqi businesses would have to be addressed,
he said.
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- "It wouldn't surprise me if there's a fair amount
of it around because under the regime (of ousted President Saddam Hussein)
bribes and kickbacks were a very successful strategy, so that type of activity
was rewarded, and the people who didn't participate in it basically didn't
succeed," he said.
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- Foley said the key to turning that around was having
a good set of commercial laws and a judicial system that enforced the laws.
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