Gas Prices
Linda Cook reports gas prices are up 560% in Iraq –
…prices have ballooned from a government-backed 5 cents a gallon last summer to a less-subsidized 33 cents a gallon.
By year’s end, Iraqi gasoline is expected to cost about 50 cents a gallon, according to Robert Silverman, director of the U.S. State Department’s Office of Iraq Economic Affairs.
And the State Department is clueless as to what repercussions this will have in its rebuilding efforts –
Silverman lauded the Iraqi government’s move to make drivers pay more for gasoline as a way to help lure outside investors to the country’s flagging refinery infrastructure and to stop fuel smuggling across the border into Iran and Jordan, where it can be sold for a higher price.
Dead wrong. This will actually be another in a long line of things that undermine the fledging government. In an effort to achieve its own ends (US goal is to encourage foreign investment) the government is morally isolating itself from the population (which wants cheap gas to make a living).
-Shlok
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