BAGHDAD, 29 March 2004 — Iraq’s inflation rate has dropped by half over the past three months, but crucial foreign aid is still being stifled by the continued fighting and US-led occupation, a minister said yesterday. “Inflation is now 28 percent, and has been around that rate for the last three months. Before that, it was around 50 percent,” Interim Planning Minister Mehdi Hafez told AFP after a press briefing. Hafez told reporters Iraq’s economy was steadily improving a year after the US-led invasion which toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein and ended more than a dozen years of international sanctions and decades of inefficiency.