Mahmoud Dagher, an economist and former Director General of the Central Bank, disclosed on Tuesday that the surge in the dollar is attributable to cash leakage to sanctioned institutions.
“There is no dollar crisis, but rather a crisis of merchant dollars in cash that leaks to cover trade with punished entities, and it represents less than 10% of the central bank’s sales,” Dagher said in an interview with Shafaq News Agency. At 1,320 dinars to one dollar, the dollar is steady in financing Iraqi imports.”
“The cash problem does not represent a large volume, so the demand for it is a demand for continuing imports from punished entities,” he noted. These people have made a mistake.
“The poor Iraqi citizen has nothing to do with the dollar because inflation is low, and the person who has a salary has nothing to do with the dollar,” he said. When he wants to travel, for example, he has a card that he loads with the necessary amounts, and he goes out and takes dollars for living and shopping reasons, so he doesn’t need cash dollars.”
“Those who need cash dollars are those who deal with sanctioned entities or speculators,” he added, adding that “these people will suffer from the fire of this rise until they abandon this type of trade or find another outlet until they return to the right path.”
He claimed that “speculators and importers from sanctioned entities, who represent a small portion of the bank’s total sales, are responsible for what happens to the cash dollar.”
The dollar is gradually rising against the Iraqi dinar these days, with the Al-Kifah Stock Exchange registering 155,000 dinars versus 100 dollars on Tuesday morning.
