The economic indicators showed that poverty rates in Iraq decreased significantly during the second half of last year, after a significant increase in the first half. In contrast, the levels of foreign reserves decreased by 20 percent last year, but they are still within the "limits of sufficiency", while obstacles continue in the oil sector, which is the most important source of income in the country.
The Iraqi Ministry of Planning announced a decrease in poverty rates in the country to 25 percent of the population, indicating that the number of poor people in Iraq is less than 10 million people.
The ministry’s spokesman, Abdul Zahra Al-Hindawi, said that “the indicators available about the country’s poverty rates, according to the latest study in cooperation with the World Bank in the second half of 2020 amounted to 24.8 percent,” noting that “in the first stage of the emergence of the Coronavirus pandemic in the first half of last year, the poverty rate increased to reach 31.7 percent. However, it decreased again thanks to the measures taken, including lifting the curfew, and the return of work and activities to normal conditions, which led to a decline in the percentage to 25 percent.
Source (Al-Sharq Al-Awsat Newspaper, Edited)
