IRAQ: Businessmen are afraid of privatisation and foreign competition, reports Jack Fairweather
There are few people who dream happily about the future of Iraq, but Mahmud Bunniya is one of them.
A member of Baghdad's leading business family, Mr Bunniya's ambitions, like the girth of this corpulent, affable businessman, are huge.
When he looks out of his office window upon one of Baghdad's main commercial thoroughfares, he sees a street transformed into a western cornucopia of designer clothing stores, Starbucks and MacDonald's.
"And perhaps a Bunniya supermarket selling our processed foods," said Mr Bunniya, an optimistic plug for the products where his family have made their name and money.
It's a vision of Iraq few in the west would think possible given a media diet of bombs, assassination attempts and shootings. But in downtown Baghdad the signs of economic recovery are already in place.
After 13 years of UN sanctions shopfronts are spilling on to the pavement with electrical hardware and foodstuffs.
So, the streets are dirty and the traffic gridlocked, and it's impossible to find a restaurant that doesn't sell kebab.
"This," said Mr Bunniya delightedly, "is the Middle East. I know the security situation is bad, especially if you are an American soldier.
"But the more jobs we create the fewer bombs there will be. As a businessman I would be crazy not to be here investing. Everything is up for grabs."
Unfortunately for Mr Bunniya, and other businessmen like him, it's not only Iraqis who are doing the grabbing of Iraq's virgin markets.
Last week Iraq's US appointed Finance Minister, Mr Kamel al-Ghailani, announced that Saddam's state-controlled economy would be replaced by a brave new world of free market economics.
This move is greeted with dismay by Iraq's business community which fears it will be marginalised by huge multinational companies.
Under the reforms, a foreign investor will be able to bypass men like Mr Bunniya who traditionally acted as agents for multinational companies, and buy up their own Iraqi companies to represent them.
Many in Iraq believe the announcement is the first step towards a privatisation of the public sector, including the country's huge oil reserves.
"This is not what Iraqis want," said Mr Bunniya, who has already applied in vain to represent several western companies. "We need to go into partnership with foreign companies, not be brushed aside by them. We have to take part in the rebuilding of our country."
The need for such partnership is clear to see for those brave enough to venture to Mr Bunniya's meat-processing plant, the incongruously named Nissan factory, one of the largest chicken slaughter houses in the world.
It is clean and well run, and 12,000 chickens a day used to travel down conveyor belts to their doom, while a tape message intoned "Allah wa'wabah" in accordance with Islamic practice.
But now there's not a chicken in sight, and Iraq is relying on Brazilian imports to supply one of its staple dishes.
Mr Bunniya's plant manager, Mr Amir Amin, explained: "Under Saddam, baby chickens were imported and given to farmers to be raised, before being bought back again by the government to sell at subsidised prices. The problem is we don't have farms for bearing chickens."
It's the sort of chicken-and-egg conundrum through which the former regime kept Iraq's industries isolated and dependent on the state, and it's a problem which not many western companies are going to want to solve.
Mr Bunniya said: "While we're here investing money in an unstable situation, foreign investors are waiting to pick off the most profitable Iraqi companies or set up their own franchises when things are calmer. Iraqis will get the leftovers at their own feast."
Such views are not contested by the senior American adviser at the Finance Ministry, Mr George Wolf, for whom the pressure is on to make Iraq start paying for the estimated $90 billion cost of reconstruction.
"Obviously there are going to be some sectors of Iraq's economy which are going to be of more interest to foreign investors.
"But what can we do? Iraq can't become dependent on America as it once was on the former regime, and that means liberalisation across the board," said Mr Wolf.
"There is no time in Iraq for sitting on your hands."
On that point no one disagrees.