Businessmen in the UAE have been invited to invest in tourism, civil aviation, infrastructure and real estate in Iraq's Kurdistan Region.

Massoud Barzani, the region's president, said his government would provide support and facilities with a view to attracting investment from the UAE.

He made the offer during talks with FNC Speaker Abdul Aziz Abdullah Al Ghurair and the delegation accompanying him to meetings of the Arab Inter-Parliamentary Union.

Barzani expressed admiration for the UAE's success in a number of fields, saying it had managed to turn the desert into a green paradise.

Al Ghurair said the UAE wished to explore investment opportunities in Kurdistan Region and invited Barzani to visit his country.

The Speaker held talks on investment opportunities with the region's Prime Minister, Nechirvan Barzani, who said many openings were available to Arabs and others. He spoke in particular of the tourism, oil, real estate, civil aviation, banking and insurance sectors.

"The cement sector is open to investors as Iraq will need cement for at least 25 years, and the door is open for investments in factories and agriculture," he added. "The investors can enter Kurdistan and cross from there to the rest of Iraq."

Al Ghurair stressed the need to closely examine the realities of investing in banking sector, oil extraction, insurance and investment banks.

RICH IN NATURAL RESOURCES

There are many oil and mineral resources in Kurdistan. Kurdistan Regional Government-controlled parts of Iraqi Kurdistan is estimated to have around 45 billion barrels of oil reserves, making it the sixth largest in the world, most of it recently discovered.

Extraction of these reserves was due to begin in the first three months of 2007. As of July last year, the Kurdish government invited foreign companies to invest in 40 new oil sites, with the hope of increasing regional oil production over the next half decade by a factor of five, to about one million barrels per day.

Gas and associated gas reserves are in excess of 100 TCF. Other underground resources that exist in significant quantities in the region include copper, iron, zinc and limestone, which is used to produce cement. The world's largest deposit of rock sulphur is just southwest of Erbil. Other important underground resources include coal, gold and marble.