Iraq Shopping Malls

Baghdad Invest - 05/07/2012 Baghdad.
Once a traditionally socialist country, Iraq is witnessing a burgeoning growth in malls, according to a report.

Big malls are being built across the capital, Baghdad, the largest will include a five-star hotel and a hospital, and at one already in operation, a truck arrives each week carrying frozen Big Macs from a McDonald’s in Amman, Jordan, The International Herald Tribune reported on Monday.

On the edge of the upper-class neighborhood of Mansour a huge mall is under construction and will eclipse any of the existing malls. Boutiques will sell Western brands like Ecco shoes, Zara suits and Timberland outdoor apparel, and there are plans for a video game arcade, several cinemas, more than a dozen restaurants and a bowling alley.

“People have to have fun,” said Maythem Shakir, the chief engineer of the $25 million project, which is being underwritten by a group of wealthy Iraqis and built by a Turkish company.

“People have to have the same things as everyone else in the world.”

Lamiya al-Rifaee, 40, a mother and a businesswoman, however, complained that the mall was not as big or as fancy as the ones she had visited in Dubai or Turkey. But for Iraq, she said, it is a good start, and one of the few places where she would let her children out of her sight.

“I can watch my kids playing safely and get whatever I need in the stores.”
While, the construction boom is encouraged and hailed as proof of Iraq’s progress, economists and other experts warn of a dark side. They say that the budding consumer culture covers fundamental flaws in an economy by stifling productive enterprise through the sole dependence on oil profits.

“Basically, Iraq is trying to build a consumer society, not on state capitalism like in China, but on socialism,” said Marie-Helene Bricknell, the World Bank’s representative in Iraq.

The country, mainly dependent on government jobs, also suffers from a patronage system that can quash entrepreneurial and private spirit.

“The state’s payrolls have massively expanded, not with technocrats but with party functionaries, because the state has become a way of funding party loyalty,” said Toby Dodge, a professor at the London School of Economics, at a recent panel discussion in London about Iraq.

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Indonesia Investment in Iraq

Baghdad Invest - 03/07/2012 Baghdad.

Iraq is calling on Indonesian companies and professionals to help build the fledgling nation, its deputy prime minister for energy, Hussain Ibrahim Saleh al-Shahristani, said in Jakarta on Monday.

“The Iraqi deputy prime minister stressed that the situation now is relatively safer and they will welcome Indonesian companies and professional workers in participating in their development process,” Yopie Hidayat, the spokesman for Vice President Boediono, said after the latter had met with Saleh.

Saleh said Iraq’s development needed professionals in construction and in services such as finance and logistics. There were also good opportunities in the energy sector, he added.

Yopie said that according to the Iraqi official, “Indonesia should have the biggest opportunity in entering those fields, not only focused on energy but also its supporting services.”

The two countries are currently discussing ways to overcome visa problems that continue to be an obstacle to bilateral exchanges.

“The vice president directly asked the deputy foreign minister to follow up this demand. The facilities and ease to get visas, including official and diplomatic [visas], is currently starting to be addressed,” Yopie said.

He added that the Iraqi government was offering various investment opportunities for Indonesia.

The 30-minute meeting between Boediono and his guest was also attended by Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Jero Wacik and his deputy minister, Mahmuddin Yasin, as well as the deputy foreign minister, Wardana.

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Hadeel Hassan Law Firm

Doing business in Iraq - Law firms:



Iraq is the new Middle East destination for business and investment, with Iraq's security improving, it is time to do business here, the most important thing is to find a qualified law firm to guide you on how to navigate Iraqi laws, incorporate, and start your business. Your challenges and opportunities can't wait for your law firm to catch up. You need a firm that is based in Iraq, with qualified lawyers, ready to work in concert with you delivering focused, responsive and personalized service.

At Hadeel Hassan Law Firm we leverage the talents and resources of our entire firm to deliver effective advocacy and comprehensive, integrated solutions in virtually all areas of the law across Iraq. Our infrastructure, along with our collaborative approach, enables our clients to benefit fully from the size of our team, the depth of our experience and our extensive geographic footprint. Having offices inside Iraq in Baghdad, Basrah & Erbil enables us serving our clients’ needs all over Iraq.

Due to the fact that our firm is a local Iraqi firm that used to operate and still operating in Iraq, with qualified staff of Iraqi lawyers whom had exercising legal works through the past difficult period, accompanying the changing laws and the way those laws were implemented by competent authorities in Iraq, we did gain a unique experience that not many law firms can compete us with, we also managed to build strong links with competent authorities in Iraq based on mutual respect and high understanding to each party’s needs at the current critical time of Iraq’s investment life, bearing in mind that no international law firms are legally registered in Iraq.

Also, and as an Iraqi law firm working for foreign companies for years now and supported by well-known international law firms, we are knowledgeable with foreign companies' needs with the type of services from one side and our services compliance with the Integrity and transparency International standards and laws from the other side.

We understand the dimensions of our clients’ legal needs today because we vigilantly and proactively study current laws, regulations, issues and trends and their impact on our clients’ interests. We know our business thoroughly to better serve our clients.

Our Commitment:

As an Iraqi law firm supported by well-known international law firms and to better serve our clients, we have associated offices located throughout the UK, UAE, Lebanon, Jordan and soon the USA. In addition, when necessary, we call upon our network of national and foreign correspondent counsel. Our highly qualified team is led by internationally respected and experienced lawyers in practice areas such oil & gas, construction, communication, environment and energy. We are also well positioned to deal with complex matters concerning Tax, Customs, Transportation Logistics and Cargo, Employment, Corporate, Securities matters, Commercial and Civil Litigation. Our commitment to the Iraqi laws is demonstrated by our involvement in the law amendments and by our participation and service on the boards of law organizations, industry groups, seminars, conferences, bar associations.

Najaf Investment Boom

Baghdad Invest - 08/05/2012 Baghdad.

With its sweeping highway, solar-powered street lights and plethora of hotels, the Shi'ite holy city of Najaf is a beacon for investment in Iraq, outshining other areas where projects have been slow to take off.

Virtually every economic sector in the country needs funding and attention to redevelop crumbling facilities that were neglected during decades of war and financial sanctions.

Foreign and local investors are eager to participate in rebuilding the country but complain that bureaucracy, a weak banking sector, poor legislation and a lack of land allocated for projects are huge deterrents.

Out of 780 investment licenses worth $32 billion granted to businessmen around the country since 2008, only about 30 percent of the projects have been started, according to Sami al-Araji, head of the National Investment Commission.

But the southern city of Najaf, the capital of a province with the same name, offers hope. Its success in pushing through projects suggests that with the right policies, obstacles can be overcome, and it may be an early sign of an investment boom in the country as a whole.

In fact, Najaf has become something of a model for other provinces; officials from elsewhere in Iraq look to it for guidance on issues such as how to allocate land for projects and how to work around the inefficiencies of the banking system.

Over 50 percent of about licensed 200 investment projects totaling $8 billion are under construction in Najaf province, with most development coming in the housing and tourism sectors, said Najaf Investment Commission chairman Wafy al-Bahash.

Home to the Imam Ali shrine, one of Shi'ite Muslims' most revered sites, Najaf city receives millions of pilgrims annually. The provincial investment commission has awarded 51 licenses for hotels alone to try to accommodate the influx of visitors.

Drive through the relatively clean city and you will spot boards hanging from lamp posts that read '2012 Al-Najaf: The capital of Islamic culture'. Towering cranes overshadow many streets and construction sites are filled with workers, in contrast to other provinces where half-finished buildings lie deserted.

One of the major projects in Najaf is a $25 million, five-star hotel being built by Iraqi firm Alkhawarnaq Palace. With 10 floors and a revolving restaurant at the top, the hotel is expected to be completed by the end of 2013. Construction started in April 2011.

A typical example of a Najaf project is a $7 million deal, funded by three local investors, to build 134 houses on the outskirts of the city. Construction started in April 2011 and is expected to be completed within another year. More than three-quarters of the units have been sold, and a family moved into the first house two months ago.

By comparison, in the neighboring province of Babil, infighting between officials has delayed development of at least one building for two years.

"The investor has been waiting for two years for a decision from two directorates in the same ministry. One is insisting on a two-floor building, while the other wants a single-storey building," said Alaa Ibrahim Harba, chairman of Babylon Investment Commission.

In the western province of Anbar, investors have been waiting since last year for approval to build a fertilizer factory worth $800 million.

"It was delayed because it was sent from the governate to the central government and it's taking a lot of time there for approval," Anbar investment commission head Amer Awadh told Reuters. "We have preliminary approval but not final approval."

"MINISTERS DON'T UNDERSTAND"

Iraq's economy is still very state-centric, and a weak credit culture has hampered development. Investors say a lack of laws and guarantees also makes working in the country, once a Middle Eastern breadbasket, extremely difficult.

At a recent investment conference in parliament attended by Araji and all of Iraq's provincial investment commission heads, officials openly admitted they needed to intensify efforts to improve the business environment.

A key problem is a backlog of projects awaiting approval from the central government. Provincial officials say they should be given more authority to work with investors.

Baghdad has awarded 70 licenses of which seven projects are in the works, documents showed. In Maysan, Wasit and Diyala, out of every 10 investment projects licensed in each province, work has started at only three or fewer.

"We should minimize the routine and bureaucracy in granting investment licenses," Awadh told the conference. "We are losing big opportunities to other countries because of these problems and many other issues."

Rising tensions within Iraq's fragile coalition government of Shi'ites, Sunnis and Kurds has hampered work and delayed approval of many laws, such as a long-anticipated hydrocarbons law which is crucial for the oil sector.

Policy-making is also paying the price of decades of economic isolation. Many officials are unused to moving at the speed demanded by foreign investors, and even when new legislation is passed, it can take months to be understood and implemented within the government.

Bahash says the key to Najaf's success has been close cooperation between the province's investment commission and the local governate, with officials taking the initiative to tackle problems rather than wait for a national directive.

"The governor and members of the provincial council are cooperating with us; they support our investment steps, and that has not happened in other provinces," Bahash said.

Razzaq Shareef, deputy governor of Najaf, said the province had seen so many projects take off because it had a strict policy that any investor granted a license had to pay 10 percent of the project's costs upfront as a guarantee that it would meet its commitments.

The rule has proved successful with both local and foreign investors, and is now being rolled out in other provinces following an order from the central government, Shareef said.

Iraq has a target under its five-year economic development plan of attracting $85 billion in investment by 2014. Luring pledges of that amount of money looks likely to be relatively easy; translating them into concrete projects on the ground may require educating many more government officials in Najaf's approach.

"The help from the central (government) is limited in this field," said Anbar investment commission head Awadh. "Some officials don't even understand the culture of investment. Even at the level of a minister."

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Central Bank of Iraq Construction

Baghdad Invest - 24/04/2012 Baghdad.

The central bank - Iraq, reconstruction has begun.

Noaman Muna returned to his native Iraq five decades after fleeing chaos and revolution in the 1950s.

"If I wasn't optimistic, I wouldn't have returned," says Mr Muna, who went back to Baghdad three years ago as a project manager to build the new headquarters of the Central Bank of Iraq after working at major architectural practices in London.

A decade after the United States war that ousted Saddam Hussein, plans are being drawn up to design a mega-city and urban planners and architects such as Mr Muna are at the vanguard.

Beyond the grey concrete walls and endless security checkpoints that pepper the city, cranes have been erected for the first time since 2003.

Bricks and building materials spill on to the streets, while hoardings show renderings of futuristic building projects that would rival any modern city.

"We haven't had a major development in Iraq for many years," Mr Muna says. "We had some infrastructure projects in the 1970s and '80s, monuments, but not functional buildings that serve the community. They are modest compared to what Iraq needs at the moment."

With more than 95,000 square metres of space on 40 floors, the proposed central bank will be the tallest building in the city and overlook the Tigris River from the fabled Abu Nawas Street, named after one the most revered classical Arabic poets who appears several times in the book of OneThousand and One Nights. The building is scheduled to be complete in 2016.

Designed by the Iraqi-born British architect Zaha Hadid, the central bank building will attempt to mix and modernise features of the Sumerian Ziggurat and the Samarra - both renowned temples that are a part of Iraqi heritage.

The first is a steep pyramidic structure with a flat top similar in style to representations of the ancient Hanging Gardens of Babylon. The latter resembles a great stone helter-skelter atop an enormous plinth.

"It needed to be a unique and iconic building that represents a new emerging Iraq," Mr Muna says.

Set at the end of the Karrada district, the central bank is near an island lined with lush palm trees, opposite the green zone. The island was originally planned as a cultural centre that would have housed a giant opera house designed by the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1950s, but scrapped after the socialist revolution that ousted the monarchy in 1958.

The island is known as Madinat Al A'aras, or "City of Weddings", as it was a prime location for luxury weddings in the 1980s. Suffering after years of war, sanctions and travel bans, newlywed Iraqis would honeymoon on this secluded tropical island, holidaying in chalets hidden among the palm trees.

Today, there are plans for the wedding island to be renovated as a leisure hotspot in the heart of the capital.

"We are inviting investors to help develop this land," says Osama Al Kaseer, an engineer consultant who was awarded a US$4 million (Dh14.6m) contract by the mayoralty of Baghdad to redevelop the master plan of the city. "It will have recreation: five-star hotels; tennis courts; cafes and casinos."

Mr Al Kaseer is the representative of a joint venture in Baghdad that comprises Khatib & Alami, a Lebanese architecture firm the main office of which is in Beirut; Pacific Consultants International, a Japanese construction company; and the Iraqi firm Medex.

Mr Al Kaseer faces a major task updating Baghdad's master plan to accommodate the current population of about 6 million, which is expected to double by 2030. The plan was last updated in 1972.

"We are thinking of accommodating some extra population into 'satellite cities' within a radius of 60km from the centre of Baghdad," he says. Urban planners are looking to Lebanon for inspiration as they rebuild Iraq after security improved following the sectarian conflict of 2006-2008. Beirut's reconstruction efforts after the civil war that took place from 1975 to 1990 attracted billions from foreign and local investors and re-established the capital's position as the "Paris of the Middle East".

"You have the Solidere area, which was completely ruined by the civil war," Mr Al Kaseer says. "Now it is really beautiful."

Baghdad's Rasheed Street, a bustling site of commercial activity during the Ottoman Empire, is now in a sad state with broken windows, graffiti and dilapidated porticoes housed by car repair shops and stores selling knick-knacks.

Architects involved in the restoration projects have drawn up the designs for the street modelled on Paris in 1916, as an Iraqi version of Beirut's Solidere district, filled with modern malls, cobbled walkways lined with shops, palm trees and fountains.

"Every Iraqi would agree for its restoration," says Caecilia Pieri, the head of the Urban Observatory at the IFPO Institute français du Proche-Orient based in Beirut and the author of Baghdad Arts Deco: Architectural Brickwork 1920-1950.

"It's where you had new shops from Europe in the 1920s, banks, and nearby in the cafes is where the artists, poets and singers would meet," she says.

"Rasheed Street really stood as the backbone for the urban middle class."

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Baghdad Shopping Mall

Baghdad Invest - 24/04/2012 Baghdad.

A new shopping mall in Baghdad provides for retail therapy needs.

Baghdadis who traditionally flocked to the old bazaars on the streets in the Karrada district will now have their very own shopping mall.

Construction of Baghdad Mall has started and the US$100 million (Dh367.3m) project in the affluent neighbourhood of Al Harthiya will include a shopping centre, a five-star hotel, a state-of-the-art medical centre, a gym and a giant covered parking lot.

The mall is expected to transform the shopping experience in Baghdad, said Haj Mohammed, one of the five private investors at Dar Al Sabah, an Iraq-based contracting firm that entered in a joint venture agreement with the Turkish contractor Tefirom to build the mall.

"In Iraq, retail shops have to manage with power cuts throughout the day, business has also been hurt because of the increased security crackdown, the checkpoints and difficulty with parking space has really lowered the amount of footfall you see in the commercial areas of the city," he says.

"In Iraq, if you just leave your car on the streets security officials would be suspicious that it has a bomb."

Many international retail shops, such as Mango and Zara, have entered the Iraqi Kurdistan region with the arrival of new shopping malls, drawn by the facilities and increased level of security that come with them.

Mr Mohammed expects to see the same level of interest from international brands in central Iraq when the mall is finished, which is due to be by the end of next year.

Baghdad Mall will have 16,000 square metres of leasable space.

"We have already received many inquiries from international shops that already have presence in Erbil, as well as from local shops, particularly jewellers, who would see the opportunity renting space here," Mr Mohammed says.

On completion, Dar Al Sabah expects to hire an international mall operator to manage the day-to-day requirements of the shopping centre and ensure that standards are similar to levels seen in the Gulf.

It will also invite an international hotel chain to manage the hotel.

Many foreign companies that have shown interest in expanding their operations into Baghdad have come across a range of difficulties, such as access to financing, dealing with rampant corruption, and restrictive regulations, Mr Mohammed says.

There are a range of foreign investment initiatives to rebuild the country that require the government to be a partner and this has been seen as a main reason for project delays and why foreign companies are still slow to enter the country.

"Baghdad Mall has been successful only because it was purely a private investor and private sector affair," Mr Mohammed says.

"Laws need to be updated. Right now, you have a liberal government that is open to foreign investment, but laws that date back to the socialist regime."

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