Publication: Understanding Urban Informality in Iraq: Findings from the Informal Sector Enterprise Survey
Other Files
9 downloads
Date
2023-07-24
ISSN
Published
2023-07-24
Author(s)
Moosa, Dalal
Abdel Ahad, Joanna
Moreira, Vanessa
Abstract
In Iraq, like many countries around
the world, the informal sector is a major contributor to
employment and business activity. The Iraq Labor Force
Survey (LFS) of 2021 estimated that more than half of the
workers in the country do not contribute to social
insurance, consequently informal. Recent surveys conducted
by the Central Statistics Organization (CSO) and the
Kurdistan Region Statistics Office (KRSO) in collaboration
with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) found
that 80 percent and 60 percent of businesses, respectively,
are not registered with any public entity, consequently
informal. Recognizing the prevalence of this sector and its
role in people’s earning and consumption, this report
extends the knowledge about Iraq’s urban informality through
a new survey. The Informal Sector Enterprise Survey (ISES)
was led by the World Bank, with the objective of further
illuminating the characteristics of urban informal
businesses and their workers. It was conducted in four key
cities: Baghdad, Basrah, Najaf and Sulaymaniyah. It is
complemented by two other World Bank surveys fielded around
the same time: the World Bank Enterprise Survey (WBES) and
the Micro-enterprise survey of 2022, both of which focus on
formal businesses. The next sections are organized as
follows. Section II explains the data collection process and
final sample. Section III highlights the key findings.
Section IV proposes some key policy and program priorities
to improve the lives of the people who work in the sector
and the performance of the businesses. Section VII concludes
with a few remarks on the potential for future research on
Iraq’s informality.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Moosa, Dalal; Abdel Ahad, Joanna; Moreira, Vanessa. 2023. Understanding Urban Informality in Iraq: Findings from the Informal Sector Enterprise Survey. © Washington, DC: World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/40069 License: CC BY-NC 3.0 IGO.”