By Emma Ross-Thomas
MADRID, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Foreign companies see vast opportunities to make quick profits in post-war Iraq, executives said on Thursday, but concerns about crime and violence will stop some firms taking the leap any time soon.
"To generate profitability? For a company? I'd say within a year," John Hopkins, group president of U.S. engineering firm Fluor , told Reuters during a conference on private investment in Iraq.
More than 300 firms from some 50 countries met Iraqi ministers and officials in Madrid to talk business while in neighbouring conference rooms governments discussed raising billions of dollars to help rebuild the war-ravaged country.
A European executive of a cement-making firm was even more upbeat, saying profits would roll in "immediately."
"Iraq has very low costs and so is very competitive...(We need) stones and energy," he said. "You have very cheap energy."
"The legislation is good, the market is good, but there's no security."
COSTS OF CRIME
"The main problem, and this is what I'm hearing from all the foreign companies, is the security situation," an executive at water treatment firm U.S. Filter said. Several executives echoed his concerns.
"The guy next to me is from Saudi Arabia...he pays his driver $1,000 a month, (if) he goes to Baghdad he wants $5,000. So it becomes expensive," a U.S. Filter executive said. He said persuading people to go, and paying high insurance premiums could prove tricky for some companies.
He said some $14 billion needed to be spent on Iraq's water system alone over the next 10 years.
But attacks on foreign soldiers, United Nations workers and infrastructure have plagued Iraq since the war was declared over in May while street crime continues.
Some firms, particularly non-U.S. firms, showed a reluctance to invest in Iraq in the near-term.
"It's premature," President of Canada-Suisse International Group Inc Gabriel Khayatt told Reuters.
"The factors prevailing in Iraq -- political, social and economic -- do not encourage foreign private investment," said Khayatt, an Iraqi-born Canadian. He listed a range of problems, from a lack of hotels to high insurance premiums for personnel.
But some businessmen and Iraqi officials said that once investment started to pour in, looting and street crime would likely decrease as jobs provided a degree of stability.
And German-U.S car firm DaimlerChrysler said the security was manageable.
"We think there is enough to begin exploring seriously how to expand our reach into Iraq. There is enough certainty. I don't see us having to wait until the provisional government is replaced by something else," Tim McBride, a DaimlerChrysler vice president, said.
But it might not be so simple for everyone. Hans Kraus, co-managing director of Intecsa Uhde, a German-Spanish firm thinks companies from Germany -- a fierce opponent of the war -- will be sidelined.
"Maybe the Spanish side (will invest), the German side, I don't know, we're not...the preferred ones in Iraq," he said. (With additional reporting by Daniel Trotta)