Projects stalling between extinction and treatment

Projects stalling between extinction and treatment

Economic  08/22/2024

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Abdul Zahra Mohammed Al-Hindawi


The file of stalled and suspended projects, throughout Iraq, still represents a challenge to the government, and at the same time, a provocative scene for the people. The sight of some of these projects does not please the onlookers after the state of extinction to which they were exposed, making it look like an abandoned house that the ravages of time have wreaked havoc. In addition to that, these projects have swallowed up a considerable amount of money. Some of them witnessed, before they were stopped, advanced implementation rates, perhaps exceeding fifty percent. Before this and that, those projects, at the time, were aimed at improving the level of services provided to citizens, but the problem is that neither the projects were completed, nor the money was saved, to be used in other areas. The most difficult of all is that most of the suspended projects were stopped by a government decision, that is, Decision 347 of 2015, which decided to stop the projects due to the inability to provide financial allocations for them, at a time when the state was facing two serious challenges, the first, the war against terrorism, and thus that represented an existential challenge, and the second, the collapse of oil prices to their lowest levels, so the state was Hardship and perhaps poverty as well, it has no choice but to close the doors of spending in most areas, and in circumstances where spending on projects was considered a luxury, in the face of the challenge of the state’s continued existence.
But after those circumstances disappeared, the cloud of terrorism disappeared, and oil prices recovered, it was necessary to pay attention to the stalled projects and give them the importance that is commensurate with their service importance and the amount of money spent on them, which is estimated at more than 20 trillion dinars.
There were government attempts after 2019 to address the issue, and those attempts may have achieved some results, but they did not succeed in addressing the entire file, and many projects remained suspended, awaiting a solution. Hence, the government of Mr. Al-Sudani paid special attention to the issue of stalled projects, and made it one of its priorities, and focused on projects of a service nature, as a first stage, as the focus is on school and hospital projects, water and sanitation, as basic life requirements. The government confirms that important results have been achieved on the path to solutions and treatments for many stalled projects, especially hospital projects, and their number is not small. Perhaps the most prominent problem facing this file is the presence of a significant number of these projects facing contractual problems between the implementing companies and the beneficiaries, which requires resolving these problems judicially, and this in itself requires more time and many procedures, until those problems are resolved, and that delay means more disappearances in these Projects, and extinction means increasing the cost of the project, or emptying it of its developmental and service value, and thus some of those projects may be deleted or cancelled, because they will not have economic or service value after many years of stopping and completely disappearing.
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