The Best Investment Opportunities in Kurdistan: Agriculture and Oil & Gas

We see many investors from Persian Gulf and the other countries in Kurdistan, but we don’t see many investors from Europe or other countries from the West.

The security situation in Kurdistan is stable and it is different from the other part in Iraq – for this reason Kurdistan has witnessed rapid changes since 2003 and there were many agreements made with the firms and companies from the neighbouring countries. We noticed that the media generalizes the security situation in Iraq and for this reason we realized that many companies cannot come to Kurdistan because they think that the security situation is similar to that in the other Iraqi provinces.

Now let’s talk about different sectors in the economy of Kurdistan and especially about agriculture as you an expert in the agriculture sector of Kurdistan. Can you tell us about investments in agriculture sector and what are the opportunities and the challenges in this regard especially that we know Kurdistan does not lack rainfall which represents a very crucial element for agriculture.

We know that Kurdistan has met all the Iraqi agricultural needs in the past. Many efforts have been exerted to support the farmers and the peasants by providing them with the seeds and equipment in order to limit importing the agricultural products from the neighbouring countries. Kurdistan region’s government provides loans for the people who are willing to implement agricultural projects. Yet still we cannot completely rely on our own products due to the changes in the international climate and the environment which have notably affected the production rate. Water is a very important factor in agricultural development and we have plans to use groundwater and build dams; in addition, we are in a real need to construct some canneries for the agricultural products. We do lack development in industrial agricultural sector and thus we are now working hard on it.

What is the potential for the growth of the agriculture in Kurdistan?

Kurdistan region is a fertile place and it has an appropriate environment for agriculture and tourism, and it also has great reserve of oil. We can get benefit from all the mentioned fortunes. We are now developing all the three areas: oil, agriculture and tourism. There should be numerous new projects for better use of water resources but we haven’t implemented many projects in this regard yet. We need to follow the experiments from the developed countries and we are also planning to make some agreements.

Can you give us an overview of the oil and gas sector in Kurdistan? What are its challenges? There is a lot of investments in the oil and gas sector – about 47 foreign companies are investing in Kurdistan, and even Exxon Mobil company said they were leaving the south of Iraq for the north. What does the Exxon Mobil message suggest, what should be the Exxon Mobil lesson to the international community? What are your prospectives for the oil and gas investments in Kurdistan?

First when oil was discovered in Kurdistan we noticed some not famous small companies invested in Kurdistan but after they realized that there is an abundance of oil in Kurdistan we have seen many big companies – like Exxon Mobil – willing to invest here. This is happening because most of the international companies realized Kurdistan offer much more attractive benefits than the south of Iraq.

What is the potential growth for the oil and gas sector in Kurdistan?

The number of the foreign companies investing here is increasing. The presence of the big companies like Exxon Mobil or the French TOTAL are very good indicators in this regard.

What is the role of the Erbil Chamber of Commerce and Industry in promoting investments and healthy business environment in Kurdistan? What are the effects the Chamber has had on the development of Kurdistan?

The Erbil Chamber of Commerce and Industry has a great role to present offers and facilitate agreements with the international companies through inviting these to meetings and conferences and introducing this region and its resources to the international arena. In addition, the Erbil Chamber of Commerce and Industry prompts the national companies to participate in the national investment. The Chamber provides the international companies with sufficient information regarding security situation in Kurdistan and laws governing the oil production. Also, there are more than 2,000 companies which work here and have commercial agreements with KRG (Kurdistan Regional Government).

Of course, there are a lot of challenges when doing business in Kurdistan. It is an emerging market and therefore it has problems – even in the developed markets they have problems with corruption. One of the other major challenges is the legal infrastructure including the investment law. If one of the companies wants to complain, it is still vague, and the banking system, roads, and networks are all still nascent. It is truly worthy but Kurdistan still represents a high risk market. How can the Chamber facilitate operations of the foreign players and how can it help them to overcome these major challenges?

If any country experiences war or crisis, there will be corruption in some administrations and this happens everywhere in the world. I have to say that the rate of corruption in Kurdistan has declined promptly in comparison to the last three years. If we make a comparison between Kurdistan and other provinces in Iraq, we will see that we can limit corruption better than the other provinces and our efforts are still on-going.

There are many foreign banks here including some Turkish and Lebanese banks and they try to help the merchants increase the size of their investments.

I admit that there were and still remain some obstacles but certain serious procedures have been put in place to serve the investors, so that they can make investments and thus contribute to the economic progress of Kurdistan.

What is your personal vision for Kurdistan?

The economic and commercial development is progressing, and as time goes on we hope that we will be able to export agricultural products to the neighbouring counties and establish huge national refineries, which will enable us to produce oil products, thereby stopping their import from the neighbouring countries.

Is there anything else that you want to talk about or that the investors coming to Kurdistan should know?

I hope that the media will introduce Kurdistan to the international arena and I wish that the big companies visit and explore our region so that they can get a clear vision about Kurdistan.