The Window
The mechanics of the daily sale, and the full record of what was sold, day by day.
The Central Bank publishes a bulletin for each session. This chapter explains what those bulletins contain and then opens the full recovered series.
How the sale works
The Central Bank announces a session, normally on each working day. Licensed banks submit requests in two categories: cash dollars to be delivered as notes, and transfers abroad executed on behalf of a named client, ordinarily an importer. Requests in the second category must be supported by documentation of the underlying trade.
The Central Bank publishes a bulletin after the session: the total sold, the split between cash and transfers, the number of participating banks, and the rate. In some periods it also published the per-bank breakdown. Sixty-three of those fuller bulletins survive in exact text form and are the basis of Chapter 04.
The rate at which banks buy is administered, not discovered. It has been changed by decision three times in the period covered here, and the level in force since February 2023 — 1,310 dinars to the dollar for purchases at the window — is the baseline against which this file measures the margin.
Drag the handles below the plot to set a custom range.
Annual volume through the window, and the premium the street paid
US$ billions sold (left) · average parallel-market premium, % (right) · 2004–2025
Coverage: what has been recovered, and what has not
Recovered daily figures as a share of the Central Bank's own published annual total, by year
A year at full intensity means the recovered daily figures reconcile to the annual total the Central Bank published. Pale bands are years where sessions are confirmed to have taken place but the bulletins have not yet been recovered. No missing value is ever rendered as zero.
Source: Central Bank of Iraq, session bulletins Tier A
Under whose watch
Documented window volume and captured margin, by tenure
| Office holder | Period | Documented auction days | Dollars sold | Captured margin |
|---|---|---|---|---|
سلطة الائتلاف والحكومة المؤقتة CPA / interim period | 2004-01-01 → 2004-06-28 | 137 | $1.6bn | $5.16m |
إياد علاوي Ayad Allawi | 2004-06-28 → 2005-05-03 | 229 | $5.6bn | $24.94m |
إبراهيم الجعفري Ibrahim al-Jaafari | 2005-05-03 → 2006-05-20 | 233 | $11.3bn | $49.21m |
نوري المالكي Nouri al-Maliki | 2006-05-20 → 2014-09-08 | 1,634 | $212.6bn | $5.22bn |
حيدر العبادي Haider al-Abadi | 2014-09-08 → 2018-10-25 | 749 | $115.8bn | $6.99bn |
عادل عبد المهدي Adil Abdul-Mahdi | 2018-10-25 → 2020-05-07 | 164 | $34.7bn | $1.62bn |
مصطفى الكاظمي Mustafa al-Kadhimi | 2020-05-07 → 2022-10-27 | 336 | $60.7bn | $935.26m |
محمد شياع السوداني Mohammed Shia al-Sudani | 2022-10-27 → 2026-07-23 | 307 | $72.8bn | $8.96bn |
The documented tenure floors understate 2013–2014 substantially: the Central Bank's own published annual totals for those two years are roughly four times the recovered dailies. Scaled to the verified annual volumes, the margin is approximately $2.94bn for 2013 and $2.75bn for 2014, against $0.54bn and $0.69bn documented. Both values are shown [estimate, Tier B].
The margin the window produced, tenure by tenure
Captured margin, US$ billions · documented sale days only
Figures are documented floors for each tenure, computed from recovered daily records; tenure boundaries per public record. The margin is captured by window participants — the table shows what the mechanism produced under each administration, not a personal attribution.
Series ends 2026-07-23; the current tenure is measured to that date only.How the margin is computed →Tier A
Data explorer
Every recovered day, 1 January 2004 to 23 July 2026
0 rows
Source: Central Bank of Iraq, session bulletins Tier A