July 20th, 2021
Via Belt & Road News, a report of a new Chinese investment in Iraq:
Chinese companies have agreed to build three factories in Iraq for manufacturing ceramics and cardboard with a total value of around $980 million.
The projects in the Southern AL-Muthanna Governorate bordering Kuwait and Saudi Arabia comprise a ceramics factory at a cost of $600 million, a coloured ceramics plant worth around $280 million and a $100 million cardboard factory, it said.
A delegation representing the Chinese firms is in Muthanna for the signing of the contracts, the paper said, quoting Adel Al-Yassiri, Director of the Investment Commission in the Governorate.
Yassiri said most of the production by those factories would be exported to Europe and parts of the Middle East.
He did not make clear if those projects are part of an oil-for-projects deal signed by Baghdad and Beijing in 2019 allowing Chinese firms to execute projects in Iraq in exchange for crude oil supplies.
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