Parliament issues a detailed statement on the financial budget bill

Thursday 11, February 2021 09:50
 
Baghdad / NINA / The Parliamentary Media Department issued a detailed statement on the draft Federal Budget Law for 2021.

The Parliamentary Media Department stated in a statement received by the Iraqi National News Agency / NINA / a copy of it: “The economic and political situation was not normal at all when the Finance Committee received a draft The budget law on 1/10/2021, which is considered the largest in the history of the budgets of the Iraqi state, has imposed the Corona pandemic on the whole world, and even the most powerful economic systems, its conditions for a health disaster, which was followed by a stifling economic and financial crisis, of which Iraq was not, of course, spared. The borrowing limit to pay his employees' salaries.

She added: "The government is supposed to take into account the criticality of the situation and the size of the crisis when preparing the budget, so that it has an economic dimension and contains real development and reform plans to avoid the country and the people falling into such crises in the future, or at least it contains some of the (white) reform paper. Which was adopted by the government and was welcomed by the political circles in all its various aspects. Rather, it was a rich and large-scale budget that was heavily borrowed, whether internally or externally, in which no consideration was given to the risks of these steps and their consequences for future generations in Iraq.

And she continued: "All of 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 dinars from the Central Bank, as well as an angry street waiting impatiently to provide the simplest services, job opportunities and a decent life. Parliamentary finance should not take upon itself the responsibility of correcting the course, rewriting the budget strategy, and taking crucial decisions and rapid, urgent and comprehensive reform measures that put the Iraqi state on the right economic path.

According to the statement, the Finance Committee put all these challenges on the table of its meetings to start a marathon that extended to 45 meetings at a rate 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 listened in lengthy meetings with the Bureau of Financial Supervision to Detailed reports, as well as 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 guarantee Creating thousands of jobs. "

The statement pointed out to "reducing spending and reducing the deficit in the narrowest limits and enabling the committee 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, increasing allocations for developing regions, and providing allocations for the construction of Mosul airport, rehabilitating the entrances to the capital, Baghdad, and the Badaa water project in Basra.

Regarding the file of the relationship between the federal government and the Kurdistan Regional Government, the statement clarified: “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 lay down many options that guarantee the rights of the Iraqi people in a just and satisfactory manner. "

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