Overseas Iraqis and Kuwaiti entrepreneurs are inundating US reconstruction officials with requests to build everything from plush resorts to cement factories for a new Iraq free of Saddam Hussein.
The temptation to cash in is tempered by worries about security in a country still plagued by sporadic gun fights and without an interim Iraqi government. But plenty of firms already see potential.
"We get calls all the time, how can they link up," said Rafael Jabba, director of economic activities for the US Agency for International Development in Iraq.
PHOTO: AP
Reconstruction spending could hit US$600 billion over the next decade and talk of privatizing parts of the economy may open room for new businesses to move in.
Bechtel Corp is handling the bulk of the huge postwar rebuilding effort, and USAID refers interested local firms and Iraqi expatriates to the San Francisco-based company.
Overseas Iraqis or Kuwaitis from right next door have some advantages over other foreign investors in snagging subcontracts from Bechtel because they know the region's language, customs and consumer psychology.
But Iraqi returnees could be shunned as carpetbaggers by those who weathered the rule of Saddam Hussein. And Kuwaitis could face a backlash for allowing their country to be used as the launching pad for the US-led invasion.
Nevertheless, Jabba said he has been "inundated" by dozens of Kuwaiti companies hoping for a piece of the anticipated boom across the border.
Among them is a builder that wants to open a resort around the southern city of Basra, Iraq's second largest city.
Others are interested in shipping, cement factories, warehouses and in handing the customs clearance of the flood of goods now starting to pour into the wartorn country.
"We are definitely interested in doing business in a new Iraq. We are alert and watching," said Ghassan al-Khaled, chief executive of Aerated Concrete Industries, a Kuwait-based maker of prefabricated buildings.
As for Iraqis, there may be thousands in the United States alone interested in returning for business, said Aziz al-Taee, chairman of the Iraqi-American Council.
Al-Taee fled Iraqi political persecution in 1983 and wants to return to check out opportunities in the wireless communications sector.
"There are no cell phones in much of Iraq," said al-Taee, who runs a chain of Philadelphia-based electronics shops. "That's the way to the future."
Citing unrest throughout Iraq, Al-Taee says "right now is too risky" to invest. But unstable security is not the only barrier to investment. The lack of a government means there is also no one to enforce business contracts.
Jabba's agency is telling interested investors that they can go in and seal their own deals, but he warns that nothing can be guaranteed.
"You have to take your own level of risk, because we're not setting laws," Jabba said. "And later when they Iraqi government comes into power, it may work in your favor, it may not."
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