On Sunday 01.10.2023, the Research and Consultation Center at Cihan University – Dohuk held an International workshop online on the Google Meet platform entitled “Will the development road be Iraq’s gateway to the World”.
🎙️Hosted by the speakers:
📌 Dr. Rana Khalid, holds the position of Chief Researcher and Executive Director at the IFPMC-London Public Policy Forum. She earned her PhD in International Relations and holds a second Master’s degree in International Economic Relations from the London School of Economics (LSE).
📌 Mr. Ziad Al-Hashimi, MSc International transport and logistics from Cardiff University, ex-commercial director in global shipping companies (Dubai, London), and currently, multimodal transport consultant.
🎙️Session Management:
Dr. Nawar Al-Saadi, Director of the Research Center at our university.
Dr. Rana spoke about the following:
The transport corridor networks typically link gateways and are the foremost expression of global
connectivity. (The Development Road) is a project introduced previously and presented in the past
under the name Dry Canal. The interests of subsequent Iraqi governments are different from each other
when dealing with this project.
Development Road project formulation seeks to achieve two primary targets.
1- enhance Iraq’s geo-economic role.
2- enhance Iraq’s role as a connection between various regional powers.
3- Diversifying sources of income in the Iraqi economy.
4- political longer mandate.
In this workshop we will learn together:
What is the meaning of transport corridors & Its relationship to sustainable development? Then we
discuss the Iraqi development road, could it be a corridor connecting Iraq with the world? What does
Does it need to reach the targets? Can it achieve its goals?
We will interact with you through Q& A and exchange the most important sources that can benefit
researchers in this topic.
And Mr. Ziad Al-Hashim he second speaker he started talking about:
The international transport sector is one of the highly competitive and complex sectors, previously carried out in a simplified model that transports goods from the factory to warehouses, either by land or sea.
Nowadays, international trade and international transport have integrated in unified international global supply chains.
5. Historically, Iraq has been isolated from international transport, manufacturing and supply chains due to the circumstances it went through.
Its very crucial for Iraq to engage in the international transport sector through strategic projects, such as the development road project.
However, There are some reservations about the Iraqi government’s approach of dealing with the development road project, firstly, it has promoted the project under the slogan of ‘Linking East and West trade’, Secondly, the government has appointed unspecialized consulting firm, to conduct the feasibility study, and the main focus was on the engineering and technical side and almost ignored the commercial and economic side.
In terms of, Linking east and west Hypothesis, there are several stumbling blocks, that weaken Iraq position to play a tangible role in connecting trade movements between Asia and Europe. 1/ Iraqi geography is far away from sea trade routes and diverting or altering these routes is completely unviable, due to increase in operating costs of the vessels, 2/ land transport is normally used for final destination deliver for short to medium distances, and not for long haul transport, as this will add unseccery costs of the whole journey. 3/ shipping lines business model is designed for long deep sea transport between Asia and Europe, as this is the only way to cover operating costs and create profits, therefore, these companies will not compromise their business model by allowing other parties to manipulate vessels journey schedules or utilise the companies containers to generate profits. 4/ insurance companies normally accept covering goods on vessels board only, with no option for long distance transport insurance. 5/ containers turn around management, which related to moving full container in east-west leg and moving back empties on west-east leg can only managed through sea vessels and not by land due to high costs and difficulties to distribute empty containers 6/ bottle neck affect, I.e. difficulties to off load massive containers number from mother vessels and transport by railroad for long distances.
Therefore, the most viable model for Iraq, firstly, to seek regional railroad network integration with Turkey and gulf states rail network, to boost regional trade movement, secondly, to utilise the development road to initiate and develop national industries and logistical services and effectively engage and integrate with the international supply chains, and utilise the port and road to move Iraqi exports towards north and south.
At the end of the session, many questions and scientific interventions were raised by attendance.
