How did the Finance Committee deal with the largest budget in the history of Iraq?

How did the Finance Committee deal with the largest budget in the history of Iraq?
11/02/202111/02/2021



The economic and political situation was not at all normal when the Finance Committee received the draft budget law on 01/10/2021, which is considered the largest in the history of the budgets of the Iraqi state. The Corona pandemic imposed on the whole world, and even the most powerful economic systems, its conditions for a health catastrophe, which was followed by a stifling economic and financial crisis, from which Iraq, of course, was not spared, but rather it reached the limit of borrowing to pay the salaries of its employees.


The government is supposed to take into account the criticality of the situation and the extent of the crisis when preparing the budget, so that it has an economic dimension that contains real development and reform plans to avoid the country and its people falling into such crises in the future, or at least it contains some of the (white) reform paper adopted by the government. It was welcomed by the political circles of all walks of life. Rather, it was a large, large-scale budget that was heavily borrowed, whether internally or externally, in which the dangers of these steps and their consequences for future generations in Iraq were not taken into consideration.

All this and more made the Finance Committee in an unenviable position, between dealing with a deficit of 44% and internal borrowing that reached 47 trillion from the central bank, as well as an angry street eagerly awaiting the provision of the simplest services, job opportunities and decent living, what was in front of the Parliament Until it takes upon itself the responsibility of correcting the course, rewriting the budget strategy, and making crucial decisions and rapid, urgent and comprehensive reform measures that put the Iraqi state on the right economic path.

The Finance Committee put all these challenges on its meeting table to start a marathon that extended to 45 meetings with a total of 500 working hours, hosting most of the government ministers, more than 300 government officials and all governors, studying hundreds of statements and tables extensively, and listening in lengthy meetings with the Bureau of Financial Supervision on detailed reports, as well as On holding seminars with academics, economists, trade unions and specialists in the private sector, to be able to reduce the deficit to 19% only and maintain the currency reserves in the central bank from the risk of borrowing and include materials that stimulate the national economy and support agricultural, industrial and real estate banks to advance those sectors that will ensure the creation of thousands of opportunities the work .

With the reduction of spending and the narrowing of the deficit, the committee was able to raise the investment budget that was chaotic and unclear, as the committee took a decision to allocate funds for stalled and stalled projects in the governorates, allocating 400 billion dinars to build the large Faw port and doubling the allocation of petrodollars to (one trillion) for oil-producing provinces. And increasing allocations for developing regions and providing an allocation for the construction of the Mosul airport, rehabilitating the entrances to the capital, Baghdad, and the Badaa water project in Basra.

With regard to the file of the relationship between the federal government and the Kurdistan Regional Government, the Finance Committee dealt with the issue in a technical and professional manner far from the political dimension, as it was able for the first time to combine the two federal and regional financial oversight offices and study all the data and hosted the Minister of Oil more than once, which enabled it to develop many options Which guarantees the rights of the Iraqi people in a just and mutually satisfactory manner.

Media Department
Parliament
2/10/2021



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