Iraqi deputies accuse Electricity Ministry of squandering billions of dollars

by **Ponee** Sat Jul 20, 2013 4:03 pm

By Abbas al-Baghdadi

Azzaman, July 18, 2013

The money the government has poured into the electricity sector would have bought every Iraqi family a modern furnished flat in a western country, the Oil and Energy Commission at the Iraqi parliament said.

In its deliberations of erratic power supplies from the national grid despite “tens of billions of dollars” in investments, the commission estimated that the hard cash spent on the electricity sector “equals ten times the annual budget of Bahrain.”
Bahrain’s annul budget is in the range of $30 billion.

“The sum of money that has been spent on the electricity sector equals ten times the annual budget of Bahrain and would have been enough to purchase a modern furnished flat for every Iraqi family,” said Suzan al-Saad, a deputy who attended the commission’s latest discussions of power shortages in the country.

Saad said: “The massive sums expended by the Electricity Ministry would have been enough to purchase the U.S. multinational conglomerate corporation, General Electric, with all its assets and subsidiaries and move it to the southern city of Samawa or Iraqi marshes from where it could have started building a special power plant for each Iraqi city.”

The commission’s criticism has been the harshest lodged at the ministry and comes amid complaints of power outages of over 12 hours in many major cities with temperatures brushing 50 degrees centigrade

http://www.azzaman.com/english/?p=872