المؤلفون
.
الملخص
The role of the state in economic life started to grow as a result of its intervention in many economic activities. Governments of developing countries that adopt the socialist system became the sole dominant power on all economic activities as a result of intervention in economic institutions. Iraq is an example of such countries. The government during the 1980s was controlling all the wealth of the country and monopolized the authority to build up the economy according to its own ideology. The private sector was ignored or ousted from economic activities because the state views it as an exploitive sector which cares for its interests only. This sector as a result was isolated by preventing it from participation in the productive, commercial, and industrial projects and the nationalization of its projects into the public sector. This created a gap of trust between the private sector and the state which grew larger after the wars of the 1980s and 1990s that caused the destruction of the country’s infrastructure and public institutions. As a result, Iraqi state tried hard to turn these institutions to the private sector through complete or partial sale.But this transition was not done with integrity to allow the private sector to exercise its role in the national economy because of sale to selected parties. When the socialist system ended after 2003 and a real transition into free market economy started the private sector was given the chance to enter in the process of building, reconstruction, and activating economy. But this chance was humble and restricted because economic institutions and sector were still controlled by the public sector. These sectors are also a big financial burden to the state because they were failing, providing low quality services to consumers, and lack attempts to increase their limited production or develop their means of production through technological upgrade. These sectors are still using old technology and low expertise manpower. This study, therefore, investigates the possibility of privatizing Iraqi electricity sector by figuring out the obstacles and reforms necessary to re-activate this sector, notably, privatization of this sector. The study tries also to estimate the demand for electricity for the period (2004-2016) to identify the most important variables affecting electricity demand.
الكلمات الرئيسة
)