Lot of people getting rich from Iraq

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http://www.ft.com/cms/s/d7ba7292-0283-11dc-ac32-000b5df10621.html

Iraq's harsh realities disguise its lucrative opportunities
By John Dizard

Published: May 15 2007 03:00 | Last updated: May 15 2007 03:00

The American involvement in Iraq is just reaching the top of the roller coaster before starting on the downslope. The differences over timing are measured in months, and not many months at that.

So what is the likely future of Iraq? And, since this is the Financial Times, is there any money to be made or lost from that future?

There are a lot of people with opinions about Iraq, but few who actually know what is going on.

One of those is Ali Allawi, whom I met in Baghdad when he was defence minister, and who subsequently was finance minister, and a key figure in the renegotiation of Iraq's sovereign debt - one of the few well executed postwar operations in Iraq.

Presently, Mr Allawi lives most of the time in London, and is the chairman of a company that has partnered in the development of Progas, a Karachi-based liquefied petroleum gas importer and distributor. Dr Allawi, 60, was educated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Business School, and spent his early career at the World Bank. His family is at the centre of the Iraqi elite, in particular of the Shi'a community. They had left Iraq after the rise of the Ba'ath party and Saddam. snip

As for commercial interests, Mr Allawi says: "I think that if you are in a fast-moving consumer goods business, for example, Iraq has a lot of opportunities. There is a lot of cash there, and a lot of resources. This is a good time to set up relationships for establishing a presence in Iraq, either with local or regional partners."

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