Golden hopes for Iraq as a business opportunity are nothing new. A week after the American-led invasion in 2003, Paul Wolfowitz, the US Deputy Secretary of Defence at the time, told Congress that the country would be earning $50 billion to $100 billion a year in oil revenues within three years and would therefore be able to finance its own reconstruction. He was hopelessly optimistic. Six years on, oil earnings are a tiny fraction of that sum and reconstruction has barely begun.

Violence, bureaucracy, difficult regional politics, a lack of basic infrastructure and, more latterly, corruption have all stifled any sort of business renaissance.

But some British groups are managing to clinch deals. In February Mesopotamia Petroleum Co signed a £277 million joint venture deal with the Iraqi Oil Ministry. Maritime & Underwater Security Consultants has won a contract to map the sea bed off the Al-Faw peninsula. B-Plan Information, a British computer software company, is working for Rafidain, the biggest Iraqi bank.

Heavweight blue chips are interested, too. Rolls-Royce, HSBC, BP, Shell and Wood Group were among the 23 UK companies that accompanied Lord Mandelson to Baghdad this month.

Thirty foreign companies are said to have bid for licences for important oilfields and the contracts are scheduled to be awarded in June.

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