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Hi Ramsey and others, Thanks for your comments. You also ask: > Does > anyone know why less than 50% of approved contracts > make it into the country? So that people know, the data to which Ramsey's referring can be found on the UN Office of the Iraq Programme's website at http://www.un.org/Depts/oip/latest/basicfigures.html The second table (accurate to 31 March 2001 when I look at it now) reveals that, although $17,477 + $3,830.8 = $21,307.8 million of contracts (approved by the Sanctions Committee + approved under the "green lists"), only $12,082.7 million (56.7%) have reached Iraq. I don't know have a good sense of why this particular number is the one that we see. Contracts, under the best of circumstances, take time to arrive. In Iraq's case, there are a number of reasons why delays lengthen. These include: 1. a company may not start producing a "non green list" contract until it's approved as they won't want to produce something that may not be approved. 2. uncertainties in the approval process may cause reputable companies to stay away, leaving less reputable companies willing to take the sort of gambles that "oil for food" forces on them. 3. the Iraqi government will select companies from politically favourable countries - not always the most commercially viable companies. Finally, one feature of the "oil for food" programme is that the amount of money available has grown from very small quantities initially to larger ones currently. The first table on the OIP page above shows that Iraq only earned $20.7 billion over the first six phases (three years) of the programme. The remaining $24 billion or so have come in the past year and a half. While I have not seen data that show how arrivals break down by date approved, I would imagine that almost everything approved under the first six phases has arrived; things approved under the more recent phases are probably in various stages of trickling in. While I don't have a more precise picture than this, I do hope that this helps somewhat. Best wishes, ===== Colin Rowat 274 Vanderbilt Ave., #2 Brooklyn NY 11205 USA (m) 917 517 5840 (f) 707 221 3672 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Auctions - buy the things you want at great prices http://auctions.yahoo.com/ -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- This is a discussion list run by the Campaign Against Sanctions on Iraq For removal from list, email soc-casi-discuss-request@lists.cam.ac.uk Full details of CASI's various lists can be found on the CASI website: http://www.casi.org.uk