A financial deficit puts the 2024 budget in “embarrassment.” The fate of the schedules is ambiguous,

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[size=52]A financial deficit puts the 2024 budget in “embarrassment.” The fate of the schedules is ambiguous, like the Speaker of Parliament[/size]

[size=45] Baghdad/ Hussein Hatem[/size]
[size=45]More than a hundred days have passed since the year 2024, and the public financial budget schedules are still missing, at a time when the Finance Committee revealed that the financial deficit has reached 81 trillion Iraqi dinars.
Parliament Finance linked the delay in the budget schedules to the political crisis related to choosing a new Speaker of the House of Representatives, in addition to the Prime Minister’s visit to Washington, while specialists from the Ministry of Finance and Planning and the House of Representatives held the House responsible for the delay, while not welcoming the idea of ​​approving a tripartite budget in the first place.
Yesterday, Tuesday, the Finance Committee in the House of Representatives held a meeting headed by Atwan Al-Atwani in preparation for the arrival of the 2024 budget schedules, where it hosted the Director-General of the Accounting Department and the Director-General of the Budget Department in the Ministry of Finance.
Al-Atwani confirmed, according to a statement from his media office received by Al-Mada, that “the meeting came in preparation for the arrival of the 2024 budget schedules,” adding, “We discussed a number of files, including the delayed release of funding, and we reviewed the 2023 spending schedules.”
The Chairman of the Finance Committee said, “According to the budget law, the 2023 budget must arrive before the end of last year, but the additions obtained must be included in the 2024 budget tables.” He added, “High spending and its very significant increase prompted the government to review these costs and actual spending for the year 2023.”
Al-Atwani pointed out, “There are some violations by government institutions, whether ministries or governorates, regarding the budget, and they must adapt, given that some governorates spent from the food security law within ongoing projects, and this created a major problem that must be corrected within the 2023 budget, and we look forward to it reaching Budget during this month.
He continued, “The greatest weight of the high spending came within the operational budget, and we look forward to non-oil revenues being a great help in the past years to oil revenues. Therefore, we are interested in the automation system, whether government or parliament, and there are practical steps that are intended to increase oil revenues.” Al-Atwani revealed, “The size of the 2024 budget reached 228 trillion, with a deficit that reached 81 trillion. Therefore, the government is serious about reviewing the financial allocations and its actual needs, and it must be compared with the actual spending of the 2023 budget and give every ministry and institution what it deserves.”
The Chairman of the Parliamentary Finance Committee expressed his hope that “the vote on the budget tables for this year will take place before the end of the current legislative term.”
For his part, a member of the Parliamentary Finance Committee, Thamer Dhiban Al-Hamdani, says, “The 2024 budget schedules have not yet reached the House of Representatives, due to the absence of political consensus on choosing the Speaker of the House of Representatives,” noting that “the visit of Prime Minister Muhammad Shiaa Al-Sudani to Washington also affected the date of sending the schedules to Parliament.”
Al-Hamdani added, “The Finance Committee is awaiting the Prime Minister’s return from America in order to expedite the full discussion of the budget details,” pointing out that “delay is normal, as it is delayed every year.”
In addition, the financial advisor to the Prime Minister, Mazhar Muhammad Saleh, explains that “the procedures for completing the public financial tables for the fiscal year 2024 in order to submit them to the legislative authority for approval and immediate implementation are only a response to the text contained in the Federal General Budget Law No. 13 of 2023 ( Tripartite) which stipulated the submission of schedules of public expenditures and revenues adapted according to the new fiscal year and its objective circumstances for the year 2024 for legal approval.”
He pointed out that “the most important thing in these tables is determining the levels of investment spending on new projects, which is fundamental and fundamental spending in the movement of the national economy, as it is directly linked to the development and growth of the economy by providing objective conditions for the movement of government demand for supplies and inputs for investment in projects.” New approved.
Saleh pointed out, “The demand for productive factors associated with government investment activity is essential in achieving the targeted level of growth in the annual gross domestic product and sustaining its momentum, in addition to its connection to the labor market and business and moving them according to a climate required by the sustainability of the country’s economic development itself.”
In turn, economic affairs researcher Bassem Antoine believes that “Iraq’s economic conditions do not make it capable of implementing a tripartite budget,” noting that “the country’s economy is rentier and depends primarily on oil imports.” He held “the Ministry of Finance and Planning and the House of Representatives responsible for delaying the budget,” considering them “violators because of exceeding the country’s fiscal year.”
He noted that “the budget deficit, which the government claims is planned, will become a disaster if oil prices decline.” It is noteworthy that the draft budget law for 2023 has a value of 197 trillion and 828 billion dinars (about 152.2 billion dollars), with a total deficit amounting to 63 trillion dinars (48.3 billion dollars). The budget was also built on an oil price of 70 dollars per barrel and expectations of exporting 3.5 million barrels of oil per day. , including 400 thousand barrels per day from the Kurdistan region.
In June, the House of Representatives approved the financial budget for the years 2023, 2024 and 2025, after a difficult struggle and a series of parliamentary sessions. This budget was considered the largest in the country’s history, with a value of about 153 billion dollars for each year.[/size]
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