Laws must be amended prior to privatization of govt. banks – MP

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: A lawmaker from the Kurdistan Alliance (KA) bloc said on Friday that the parliament has to enact some legislations and amend others prior to the privatization of government banks. “The non-government banks currently operating in Iraq are suffering from the lack of legislations and that is why we can not call for privatizing government banks before completing the legal framework of banks activities in general,” Sami al-Atroushi, a member of the Iraqi parliament’s financial committee, told IraqiNews.com news agency. “The government banks are still subject to the amended law of 1998 on public enterprises, which requires their restructuring on a finance basis that is in line with their importance in the Iraqi banking sector,” said Atroushi. AmR (P) 1