Iraq is one of the prehistoric countries of the earth, which is struggling due to massive war situations for decades. Wiping out all its injuries, the country is right now ready to rebuild itself completely.
Plagues by decades of wars, economic sanctions and neglect, Iraq is left with a severe housing shortage. Pre-dating to the “Saddam-Era”, housing shortage has gone from bad to worse with new construction unable to keep up with demand coming from a surging population and the obsolescence of existing dwellings.
Iraqi population growth stands at 2.9% annually, and the lack of construction since 1997 to date, widened the housing deficit from 350,000 to 3 million units shortage. Presently, Iraqi government is taking measures in the pursuit of closing this gap. However, ongoing bad press coverage of the country’s security and political turmoil has not been helping in attracting sufficient investments to the sector.
According to latest financial news magazines, IEA and the IMF, Iraq is on track to not only claim its position as the world leading oil exporter, but also achieve the world’s highest sustainable compounded economic growth of 9% per annum for the next five years.
Investment opportunities are shaping up in different sectors of this country. A few daring companies are not being deterred by the country’s political strife and are tapping in to the tremendous amounts of potential business profits that can be gained from taking a risk and establishing themselves in Iraq.
SCAS Capital is the only professionally private equity firm targeting Iraq and investing in real estate projects and companies in the country. It has been reported that the firm has already released a series of real estate investment funds ranging between $5-15 million each, and targeting NIC-sponsored projects as well as privately held real estate projects with expected fund IRR exceeding 60%.
SCAS achieves these IRRs by adopting investment strategy focusing on real estate assets in prime locations as well as projects that 100% NIC and government backed in safer areas of Iraq.
Updated 10 May 2014 | Soruce: Digital Journal | By S.Seal