Iraq's Consumer Goods Boom Faces a Twist
Nov. 2, 2003 -- -- The fall of Saddam Hussein's regime has seen an overall boom in the consumer goods business with the ready availability of electrical appliances such as satellite dishes and satellite phones — items once banned by the Baathist establishment. But five teams of reporters from ABCNEWS and Time still found some major economic hurdles in Iraq's postwar consumer market boom.
Northern Iraq: Much Better Central Iraq: Much Better Southern Iraq: Much Better
The availability of goods as an economic indicator, along with access to jobs in Iraq, comes with a couple of big qualifiers. In different ways, in different places, our teams found an explosion in commerce, and a corresponding boom in the availability of goods.
This reaches well beyond basic produce to include newly available imported foods and higher-end consumer goods.
Reporters found television and satellite dish markets even in small towns. ABCNEWS' Jim Sciutto and Drew Millhon visited a "booming" used-car lot in the northern Iraqi city of Kirkuk stocked with vehicles trucked in via Syria and Jordan.
Overall, as Time's Hassan Fattah put it, "The markets are full, everywhere you look. You can get almost anything you want from the most obscure sorts of driers and washers and appliances to the most obscure food."
Saddam Has Gone, Now How Do We Survive?
But the qualifiers are rising prices and the lack of jobs.
For all the examples of mushrooming trade and commerce, there were endless complaints about skyrocketing prices. Oil prices in Najaf have quadrupled; the price of soap in Nasariyah has doubled; tomatoes at the Karbala market have spiked from 150 dinars per kilo to 750 dinars (about 44 cents).
A home in Kirkuk that rented for 25,000 dinars (approximately $15) a month before the war is now more than 100,000 (nearly $60) a month. This is fine for Iraqis on U.S. payroll (and there are many such people) but it represents a potential disaster for nearly everyone else.
ABCNEWS' Sciutto found a woman in Kirkuk who said she had been thrilled to see Saddam Hussein fall. But in the next breath she asked how she was expected to survive, with prices as high as they've become.
In southern Iraq especially, reporters heard complaints about the "huge inequities in salaries and lifestyles." Obviously, this will be something to watch.
Editor's Note: This is not a full-fledged, comprehensive poll. But as ABCNEWS and Time review the reporting, research, and surveys completed on the ground, this may be one of the most comprehensive reporting efforts undertaken since the beginning of the Iraq war.
