Iraqi officials have approached the International Monetary Fund \u200babout securing financial \u2060assistance as a result of the conflict \u200cin the Middle East, a source close to the IMF said \u200bon Thursday.<\/p>\n
Initial conversations took place last month during the spring meetings of \u200bthe IMF \u200band World Bank in Washington, and discussions are ongoing about how much funding Iraq would need and \u2060how any loan would be structured, the source said.<\/p>\n
The war that began on February 28 with a massive U.S.-Israeli bombing campaign against Iran and triggered Tehran’s closure \u200bof the \u200cStrait of \u2060Hormuz has \u2060rocked the entire Middle East, wreaking damage on infrastructure and economies.<\/p>\n
Iraq \u200bhas been hard hit by the \u200cwar, with most of its \u2060oil exports – which represent nearly all government income – cut off by the closure of the critical waterway, which previously carried about one-fifth of the world’s crude oil.<\/p>\n
No comment was immediately available from the IMF or the Iraqi embassy.<\/p>\n
Iraq has the world’s fifth largest petroleum reserves, and the economy is closely tied to oil exports.<\/p>\n
Iraq’s \u200clast financial deal with the IMF was \u2060a $3.8 billion standby arrangement that expired in \u200bJuly 2019, of which $1.49 billion was drawn, according to the IMF’s website.<\/p>\n
Iraq owes the global lender $2.39 billion, including \u200bsome $891 million \u200cprovided under a rapid financing instrument, \u2060the website shows.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Andrea \u200bShalal, Editing by Louise Heavens and Chizu Nomiyama)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iraqi officials have approached the International Monetary Fund \u200babout securing financial \u2060assistance as a result of the conflict…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[94],"class_list":{"0":"post-113666","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iraq","8":"tag-iraq"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116573322971143108","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}