The Parliamentary Finance Committee rules out the government’s submission of the budget and identifies three reasons.
The Parliamentary Finance Committee rules out the government’s submission of the budget and identifies three reasons.
2025-04-27 03:04
Shafaq News/ The Iraqi parliament’s Finance Committee ruled out on Sunday the Iraqi government’s submission of the 2025 budget schedules to parliament for approval, citing three main reasons for this.
Committee member Jamal Kocher told Shafaq News Agency, “The House of Representatives has the ability to pass the 2025 budget tables if they are received by the Iraqi government, but we believe there is no seriousness in sending those tables.”
He added, “There are three reasons preventing the Iraqi government from sending the schedules. The first is the lack of cash to implement new projects and other things. The second is the government’s failure to fully disburse the financial allocations for 2023 and 2024, which is also due to the lack of cash. The final reason is the approaching parliamentary elections. The government does not want to pass the budget so that the funds are not used for electioneering. Therefore, we do not expect the schedules to be sent. The government will only pay salaries in the coming months.”
Last Thursday, parliamentary finance committee member Adi Awad confirmed the reasons for the delay in sending the federal budget to the House of Representatives for approval. He explained that the political situation, the impending elections, and the lack of political will to approve the budget law’s schedules have contributed to the delay .
The MP predicted: “There may not be a budget for 2025 because the government lacks a genuine will to send it to Parliament .”
On April 18, a member of the Parliamentary Finance Committee, Moeen Al-Kadhimi, told Shafaq News Agency that the government was “not serious” about submitting revised budget schedules for 2025 .
It is noteworthy that the financial and economic advisor to the Prime Minister, Mazhar Mohammed Salih, during an interview with Shafaq News Agency on April 16, attributed the delay in sending the 2025 budget tables to the Council of Representatives to “amendments related to the costs of extracting and transporting the Kurdistan Region’s oil, which required re-evaluating the calculation methods .”
Saad al-Nubi, a member of the Parliamentary Finance Committee, told Shafaq News Agency on April 15 that he was surprised by the government’s delay in sending the budget law tables to the House of Representatives. He explained that “the budget was supposed to reach Parliament before the end of last month,” noting that “the committee pressured the Minister of Planning and the Minister of Finance, asking them to explain the reason for the delay in sending it, but they have not received any response so far.”
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