Financial Inclusion and Economic Development in Iraq

This paper investigates the nexus between financial inclusion and economic development in Iraq. It uses two dimensions of financial inclusion the first is the access of financial services and the second is the usage of the financial services, while GDP per capita used as proxy for economic development. The paper finds low level of financial inclusion index in Iraq estimated by (10 %). In addition, by using the Autoregressive Distributed Lag Model (ARDL) for cointegration the paper finds unfortunately no relationship the financial inclusion indicators and economic growth during the period 1990-2016. This fact emphasizes that more efforts need to be done to enhance and extend the financial inclusion in Iraq through financial literacy, costumers protection, providing financial services to rural area, and engage of low income people in the formal financial services especially via microfinance products.