Central Bank raises travelers’ cash dollar allowance to $3,000

BAGHDAD — Travelers can buy $3,000 in cash at Iraq’s official exchange rate from Tuesday, up from $2,000, once every two months and up to six times a year, the Central Bank of Iraq said Monday.

Central Bank Governor Nizar Nasser Hussein announced the increase earlier Monday at the 16th session of the Ministerial Council for Economy, chaired by Deputy Prime Minister Mohammed Ali Tamim and attended by seven ministers. The council discussed keeping the dollar exchange rate stable, its statement said.

“This step aims to provide greater flexibility for travelers in covering their expenses and to facilitate their access to foreign currency through approved official channels,” the bank said in a statement.

At the official rate of 1,520 dinars per dollar, $3,000 costs 4.56 million dinars. The same sum would cost about 5.06 million dinars on the parallel market, where Baghdad exchange shops sold $100 for 168,500 dinars on Sunday morning, according to 964media’s daily rate check.

The announcement came a day after the bank denied raising the allocation to $3,500. Haider Ghazi, the bank’s media director, told Iraqi media Sunday that a document circulating on social media in the bank’s name was forged and that travelers could still buy $2,000.

Tamim, who said Sunday that Washington had decided to send Iraq $3 billion in cash over two months, said in a television interview that the Central Bank would increase official-rate dollar sales to travelers at airports. He did not give a figure.

In July the bank cut the monthly cash dollar allocation for travelers from $3,000 to $2,000 under rules it said were meant to improve foreign currency management and encourage the use of electronic payment cards. It described the changes as “purely regulatory.”

On Oct. 15, the bank limited the $2,000 to once every two months, up to six times a year, starting Oct. 18. Under the new rules a traveler can buy up to $18,000 a year, up from $12,000 under the October rules and down from $24,000 under the July ones.

The allocation lets citizens buy a limited amount of dollars at the official rate through licensed banks and exchange companies before traveling abroad for tourism, medical treatment, education, business or religious pilgrimage. It is meant to keep travelers off the parallel market while helping the Central Bank manage the country’s dollar supply. The gap between the two rates has also made it a target for people who buy at the official rate and resell on the black market, a practice the bank said in July it wanted to curb.

The official rate has been 1,520 dinars per dollar since Oct. 7, up from 1,320, after the government devalued the dinar.