Just last week there was an Iraqi business and investment conference which was held in Dubai. That conference brought together Iraqi businesses and government officials with foreign corporations. The objective of conferences desire these is to encourage foreign direct investment in Iraqi companies and to increase the demand for Iraqi goods. The conference had about 600 attendees with about 75 potential investors.
MR. BRINKLEY:It's a very great honor today to share a podium with my colleague His Excellency Minister Fawzi Hariri from the government of Iraq. We've worked in close partnership with his ministry over the past year's time and as Secretary England indicated undergo made significant progress in our efforts to restore sustained employment to the populate of Iraq. And we'll communicate about exactly what that develop is what the challenges are -- and there are challenges -- and how we're addressing those challenges going forward.
Specifically today some points I want to bring out are we've had a material impact -- and by material force I mean people working in factories today who were not working prior to our collaborative efforts with the attend of Industry on 17 operations in Iraq. Those range from heavy industrial operations that make complex goods industrial goods vehicles to factories that employ predominantly women doing things desire manufacturing clothing and weaving carpet and they range all over the country. And I'll walk through some graphs with you here.
Our efforts in Iraq have three primary focus areas. The first is -- and this was the beginning of our undertakings last pass -- to alter fit contracting command in an initiative called Iraqi First to award contracts to Iraqi businesses that are currently being awarded in the region for material goods services that are needed to sustain our physical presence there in Iraq today. A year ago very little was falling to Iraqi businesses; today we've registered and awarded contracts to over 3,000 private Iraqi businesses and last month over $180 million in contract awards were given to Iraqi businesses. That is a significant economic stimulus. This is done in partnership with Major command Darrell Scott (sp) of Joint Contracting Command for Iraq and Afghanistan. He estimates that has generated employment in access of 50,000 Iraqi workers. That is a key focal area for the task compel's effort.
The second area is to furnish with the minister of industry to arouse and to regenerate employment where it has been lost in the industrial base of Iraq. We've shared statistics on this before. We've shared statistics on unemployment in Iraq which is rampant and a study contributor in the opinion of our commanders and in the opinion of our Iraqi counterparts a major contributor to instability in the country today.
There's no human population in the world that can withstand high levels of unemployment. By high levels of unemployment and underemployment. I'm talking in excess of 50 percent. There's no human population in the world that can withstand that level of economic distress and not experience attendant violence unrest sympathy with violent actors.
This is what our commanders have encountered. This is why this effort is so important to the Department of Defense. As our commanders alter force posture to address the kinetic needs of the operations in Iraq our ability to give that with economic development that brings a reward to areas where stability exists is absolutely critical to enabling defense forces be they U. S defense forces or Iraqi defense forces to establish and sustain security. I'm going to just go through some slides very quickly if we can bring those up.
The first is a review of our efforts with joint contracting command showing the progress we've made over the past year in generating and awarding business to private industry in Iraq. Much of the cerebrate is always on our large efforts with the ministry on state- owned industry. But this is also a major move of what we're undertaking in Iraq and we believe it's a significant stimulus for economic growth.
Next glide. We placed a aggroup in November of manufacturing experts accountants certified public accountants business consultants in Iraq working with the ministry of industry in support of his vision to evaluate the factory operations in Iraq. Much was written about factories in Iraq. These factories are old; they're out of date; they should be shut down.
We've impacted. I've said to you as of today 17 -- materially impacted -- and that's a conservative number. We've very conservative in what we inform in terms of factories that have been impacted. The numbers are actually -- could be claimed to be higher but we're extremely conservative when we say a factory has been impacted. That means people undergo gone back to bring home the bacon and it's unquestionable; you can take a camera in there you can videotape and there are workers working who were not working before. They're being extremely conservative in this claim.
Those 17 factories were impacted without a single dollar of U. S government investment. We did not receive any funding appropriations from the U. S. Congress for restarting factories:buying the material buying spare parts restoring equipment training workers. We didn't receive anything until June of this year. In the FY '07 supplemental calculate. $50 million was appropriated to accelerate our efforts. In partnership with the minister of Industry we have now identified where we're going to grant a portion of that 50 million to over 30 factories which include major industrial operations.
So when you evaluate about the 17 factories that undergo been restarted that hasn't been done with U. S taxpayer money buying things for those factories. That's just been done through the creative efforts of our team in partnership with our command in partnership with the ministry to drive demand to factories where demand is needed to identify alternative sources of working capital where they can be identified and that's how those 17 have been impacted to go out. What the $50 million enables us to do is deepen this effort and through investments in small amounts -- machine maintenance tooling training in some cases raw material -- we evaluate to see an acceleration of this effort through the end of this year.
As we spend this money one of the points we made before is that commerce in any society is the fabric that holds a society together that underpins people's ability to get along. This is true in any society. In Iraq as commercial activity has been negatively impacted in some cases by security in some cases for a host of reasons that has negatively impacted reconciliation.
And in the case of these investments where we need equipment for a particular factory and it can be purchased from another Iraqi factory we're creating that cerebrate. We're reconnecting business relationships using this stimulus to back up rebuild across clear tribal or sectarian borders the business relationships that were very rich and that did exist in prior times in Iraq. And that's a key motivator when you look at a chart like this. How do we make over together the interconnection that existed among commercial entities in Iraq?And that's extremely important.
Iraq's industry as probably most of you well experience was the basis through which.
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