Conference on Iraq debt, hosted by Sweden

Held in Stockholm, a UN conference in Iraq, which ended on 28th May with a decision to encourage the debt forgiveness, though without proper commitments from the fledgling country’s biggest creditors!

It has been estimated that Iraq at least has around 47 billion Euros in foreign debt. During the regime of the former Iraqi president or ruler, Saddam Hussein, numerous loans were taken from the Middle-Easter countries, like – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, etc. The Geneva-based U.N. Compensation Commission says €18 billion separately remains to be paid for Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Iraq pays out 5 percent of its oil revenues to meet the compensation claims.

On the other hand, it is anticipated that Iraq will collect around tens of billions of Euros in oil revenues this year because of worldwide record-high petrol prices. Oil brought in €10 billion in the first quarter of the year and €3.8 billion last month.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki called the neighboring nations to forgive all the debts and compensation payments. He pointed out that these huge debt amounts are hindering Iraq’s way towards the development. The country has successfully reduced the violence issues within it as demanded by the Iraqi PM. However, even after that, Iraq is facing difficulties to grow as a nation overall and the main reason behind that is the unpaid debts.

The declaration at the end of the meeting outside Stockholm encouraged creditors to "consider resolving outstanding debts to Iraq". However, it has to be noted that most of the senior Arab states did not send any officials to the conference. "Of course we would have wished to have senior representation of the Arab states ... because Iraq is an Arab state. But this has not affected us and we did not consider that there was any negative impact on the conference.", Iraqi PM further stated.
"I'm encouraged that the participants reiterated their commitment to support Iraq," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said after the conference ended. In the conference dozens of countries have participated and more than 500 international delegates were there.