The Central Bank of Iraq placed new emphasis on the need to remove zeros and issue the new currency. The new currency will be in three languages and decorated with concepts from Iraq’s cultural history. The Vice-Governor of the Central Bank, Mazhar Mohammed Saleh, said that the currency’s current framework is defective, with the largest denomination equaling $21 dollars, causing traders to prefer the United State’s larger banknotes, particularly the one hundred dollar note.

Saleh said the current system will infringe on the development of the economy. Small denominations of currency should be represented by coins for small transactions and large denominations for larger financial transactions with large international institutions. However, Saleh advocates printing the currency outside of Iraq, based on bad past experiences in the nineties.

When an economic blockade was imposed on Iraq in 1990, it had to print its currency inside the country. In turn, the Iraqi market witnessed unprecedented inflation and a dramatic rise in counterfeit currency as a result of the missing international printing standards. Saleh indicated that the new currency will be in Arabic, Kurdish and English, stressing that the currency designs will be taken from Iraq’s eight thousand years of history, and will thus reflect the Iraqi nation.

The Central Bank of Iraq announced on the 23 of June its readiness to remove the zeros from the Iraqi currency. However, the advisor to the Iraqi Prime Minister for Economic Affairs called on the Iraqi Central Bank to halt procedures, warning that the mafia is preparing to defraud trillions of dinars by exploiting the currency change.