Losing the Gains of the Past : The Welfare and Distributional Impacts of the Twin Crises of 2014 in Iraq
Iraq was plunged into two simultaneous crises in the second half of 2014, one driven by a sharp decline in oil prices, the other, by Islamic State militants. Since June 2014, crude oil prices per barrel have fallen from around 112 USD to 97 USD in...
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| Language: | English en_US |
| Published: |
World Bank, Washington, DC
2016
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| Online Access: | http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2016/07/26582174/losing-gains-past-welfare-distributional-impacts-twin-crises-2014-iraq http://hdl.handle.net/10986/24991 |
| Summary: | Iraq was plunged into two simultaneous
crises in the second half of 2014, one driven by a sharp
decline in oil prices, the other, by Islamic State
militants. Since June 2014, crude oil prices per barrel have
fallen from around 112 USD to 97 USD in September and 62 USD
by December. Given Iraq's heavy dependence on oil as a
share of GDP and exports, and a source of government
revenues, this decline in prices alone would have hit Iraq’s
fragile economy hard. In addition, since June 2014, Islamic
State (IS) or Da'ash militants extended their influence
from Syria into Iraq's northern and western provinces
of Anbar, Nineveh, Salahadin, and to a lesser extent, Kirkuk
and Diyala. A total of 354,000 families were internally
displaced between June and December of 2014 which represents
about 2.1 million individuals; and those left behind have
been cut off from the rest of the country. The internally
displaced persons (IDPs) have sought refuge across Iraq and
about half of those who have crossed governorates boundaries
were settled in Iraqi Kurdistan. |
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