Market brief
Iraq
The authorities that procure water infrastructure in Iraq, how the deals are put together, and what is in the pipeline.
Reference profile for IraqMarket snapshot
The commercial picture in Iraq: the scale of the economy and the water sector, the investment climate, and where the near-term activity is concentrated.
Political stability
World Bank Governance Indicators, 2024. Percentile among all countries; higher is more stable.
Investment climate
World Bank Governance Indicators, 2024. Regulatory quality for private investment; higher is better.
Financing & PPP
- PPP frameworkEmerging (Grand Faw / desalination discussions)
- Tracked pipelineUS$ 8.4 bn in our projects register
- Active fundersWorld Bank, JICA
- Climate adaptation planIn preparation
Opportunities
- Southern (Basra) seawater desalination
- Irrigation modernisation
- Salinity control & drainage
- Network rehabilitation
Key challenges
- Declining Tigris–Euphrates inflows from upstream
- Rising salinity in the south (Basra)
- Ageing infrastructure
- Drought & dust storms
Sources: FAO AQUASTAT / national reports (latest available); World Bank 2023–24. Water losses: Statistics and GIS Authority, Environmental Statistics of Iraq 2024 (published 2025), average distribution-network losses of 24.5% across the 16 federal governorates; excludes the Kurdistan Region and water supplied without bills. Figures approximate. Governance indicators: World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators (2024).
Contracting authorities
The bodies that commission, regulate and operate water infrastructure in Iraq. Ministries set policy and sign the offtake; utilities run the assets; regulators set the tariff and the service standard.
- Ministry of AgricultureMinistry
- Ministry of Municipalities & Public WorksMinistry
- Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR)Ministry
- Baghdad Mayoralty (Amanat Baghdad)Utility
- National Center for Water Resources ManagementBasin & resources authority
- General Commission for Irrigation & ReclamationIrrigation & drainage
How deals are structured
The framework in Iraq is Emerging (Grand Faw / desalination discussions), the schemes we track carry US$ 8.4 bn of disclosed value, and the funders most active in the sector are World Bank, JICA, Bilateral.
Delivery splits by asset class across the region: dams and trunk conveyance are mostly engineering contracts carried by sovereign or development-bank finance; bulk supply increasingly uses build-operate-transfer concessions against a long-term offtake; and distribution work is let as performance-based contracts paid against measured leakage reduction. The Finance & Economics hub sets out each model and where it has been used.
How to bid
Iraq is buying water infrastructure through engineering contracts rather than concessions, and increasingly through governorates rather than ministries: the Basra desalination scheme was transferred to Basra Governorate for implementation after moving between ministries.1 The commercial question is not procurement but payment. Contractors are pressing for settlement of 41 trillion dinars of arrears accumulated since the 2014 crisis, with Basra alone owed 1.8 trillion.2
| Procuring bodies | Federal ministries and, for the largest current scheme, Basra Governorate. The governorate investment commissions are where the 2025 and 2026 wave sits.1 |
|---|---|
| Contract form | Engineering, procurement and construction awards. No water offtake concession was verified.1 |
| Payment security | None beyond the federal budget, and the budget is the problem. Price the work against a sovereign carrying a public, unsettled arrears stock; assume no escrow and no offtake guarantee.2 |
| Tax | Withholding tax of 15% on interest, loans, deposits, advances and annual allowances; non-upstream contractors to oil companies are taxed at 3.3% or 7%. In the Kurdistan Region non-residents pay 15% on deemed profits, the deemed profit rate being 20% for contracting and services and 25% for installation and maintenance.4 |
| Household tariff | Published, but old and local: IQD 10/m³ for the first block in Baghdad against operation and maintenance cost of IQD 155/m³, with much of the population not paying at all.3 |
The reference project is Basra: one million cubic metres a day in three parallel lines of 335,000, work under way by 26 July 2025 near Grand Faw Port, built by Al-Rida Group with PowerChina. Its value was not disclosed in the report that confirms the rest, and the figures in circulation differ widely, so none is printed here.1 What could not be established: the 2025 public contracts instruction, investment-law registration and agent rules, dispute forum, governing law and foreign ownership limits; the sources that would settle them all refused automated reading.
Regulatory intelligence
| Regulation | Status | Year | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strategy for Water & Land Resources (SWLRI 2035) | Reference | 2014 | National master plan: storage, efficiency, allocations. |
| 1987 Euphrates protocol and Syria–Iraq accord | Strained | 1987/1990 | Turkey releases 500 m³/s on average; Iraq takes 58%, Syria 42%. |
| Iraq–Turkey water framework and financing mechanism | In implementation | 2024/2025 | Turkish-built projects paid through Iraqi oil; no release commitment. |
| Iraq–Syria shared-waters protocol | Signed | 2026 | Data exchange; proposal to revive the joint technical committee. |
| Environmental Protection and Improvement Law No. 27 | In force | 2009 | Ministry of Environment leads under Law No. 37 of 2008. |
Primary reference: the Ministry of Water Resources (MoWR); treaty practice varies by season.
Projects
Tracked schemes in Iraq, largest first. Each has its own page with the parties, the finance and a dated history.
22 tracked in total. The full set, filterable, is in the major projects register.
Track record
What has actually been signed in Iraq, from the awards log and the major projects register.
| Year | Project | Winning firms | US$ m |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Basra Seawater Desalination | PowerChina, Al Ridha Group | 4,000 |
| 2025 | Common Seawater Supply Project | Hyundai Engineering & Construction | 3,160 |
| 2025 | Erbil Sewage Scheme | ITOCHU, Çalık Enerji | n/a |
| 1981 on line | Mosul Dam | GIMOD German-Italian consortium (dam construction); Trevi S.p.A. | n/a |
| 1977 on line | Haditha Dam | Technopromexport | n/a |
| 1973 on line | Main Outfall Drain | Soviet contractors on the middle sector; Philipp Holzmann and Polensky on the southern sector; Mendes of Brazil on the Euphrates siphon and pumping station; Iraqi contractors on the northern sector | n/a |
| 1956 on line | Darbandikhan Dam | Darbandikhan Group of Companies (J.A. Jones, Texas Contractors, Beton- und Monierbau, C.H. Tompkins); Polensky und Zoellner with Mitsubishi on the main hydro units | n/a |
| 1953 on line | Samarra Barrage | Zueblin (civil works); Ransomes and Rapier | n/a |
| 1953 on line | Tharthar Scheme | Zueblin (civil works); Ransomes and Rapier | n/a |
| 1952 on line | Dokan Dam | Dumez-Ballot | n/a |
Years without a label are award years from the curated log; rows marked on line are dated by commissioning, from the projects register. 11 rows in total for Iraq.
Repeat winners
- Zueblin (civil works); Ransomes and Rapier2 tracked awards
Firms or consortia appearing on two or more tracked awards in Iraq.
Pipeline & tenders
Structured procurements and live tenders in Iraq, drawn from the same review that maintains the pipeline tracker.
Pipeline & awards
Tenders
Prices
What households pay
| Household tariff (US$/m³) | Cost of supply (US$/m³) | Year | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| ~$0.008 | $0.12 | 2013 | World Bank project information document, Baghdad water and sewerage improvement |
IQD 10/m³ for the first block in Baghdad, on four monthly blocks of 30 m³, with sewerage charged at the same rate and industrial and government users at about IQD 100. Operation and maintenance cost was put at IQD 155/m³. Old, local and widely unpaid, but published: there is no comparable national schedule.
Residential tariffs, and the cost of supply where a utility publishes it, are kept in one place for the whole region so the comparison holds: a tariff means little without the cost it is measured against.
Watch list
What has actually moved in Iraq, dated, from the monthly briefings. Each item names the edition it came from.
- 2025-09The Common Seawater Supply EPC went to Hyundai Engineering and Construction at US$3.16 billion, with a 49-month build.August 2026 briefing
The full editions are in the briefing archive.
Sources
9 references
Project, pipeline and tender records are compiled from procurer announcements, lender disclosures and trade reporting; each project page carries its own source and the date it was last checked. Institutions are from the decision-maker directory. Economic and water indicators are cited on the reference profile.
- Iraq Business News, “Work starts at major seawater desalination project in Basra”, 26 July 2025.
- 964media, on unpaid dues owed to Iraqi contractors, 2 July 2026.
- World Bank (2017), project information document, Baghdad water and sewerage improvement.
- PwC, Iraq: withholding taxes, worldwide tax summaries.
- FAO, AQUASTAT — Global Information System on Water and Agriculture: country water resources, withdrawals by sector and dam register. fao.org/aquastat. Latest country values as compiled at build.
- World Bank, World Development Indicators and country water-sector reporting. data.worldbank.org.
- Kaufmann & Kraay, Worldwide Governance Indicators (World Bank), 2024 update — political-stability and regulatory-quality scores, 0–100, shown in the market snapshot. worldbank.org/wgi.
- World Resources Institute, Aqueduct 4.0 Water Risk Atlas (2023) — the sub-basin risk, stress and groundwater-decline layers on the interactive maps. wri.org/aqueduct.
- MENA Water Review major projects register and PPP pipeline — compiled from procurer publications, development-bank project pages and trade reporting; each record names its source.
Numbered references are linked from the superscript markers in the text. Figures without a marker come from the sources above as compiled in the site methodology.