Banking Sector in Iraq 2014: Outlook

Nozad Dawood Fattah Al-Jaff, Chairman of North Bank, largest private bank in Iraq shares his outlook for the banking sector in Iraq for 2014.

According to Al-Jaff, “All the banks will grow and eventually all the banks will meet the targets that have been mentioned by the Central Bank; simply because the Iraqi economy is so very big….We are expecting a lot more competition coming from foreign banks but the Iraqi economy is big enough to absorb all of them.”

Al-Jaff agrees that in terms of growth in the banking sector, we can expect double digit growth for 2014.

Answering the question about what people and analysts do not understand about the Iraqi banking sector, Al-Jaff comments, “The Iraqi banking sector is a new sector in terms of private banking. In terms of banking in Iraq, we are probably the oldest country in the Middle East to have banking activities. We are older than all of our neighbours in terms of such banking systems. The problem is that as of 2003 we have had a new private banking sector but the security situation hasn´t allowed people to be here freely as much as we may want them to.”