Sudani’s advisor dispels debt concerns: Iraq is experiencing its most stable period of financial stability.
Sudani’s advisor dispels debt concerns: Iraq is experiencing its most stable period of financial stability.
10-19-2025
Baghdad – Mail
The Prime Minister’s financial advisor, Mazhar Mohammed Salih, dismissed concerns about Iraq’s debt on Sunday, saying the country is experiencing its most stable financial period.
“There is a blurry picture in interpreting the issue of external debt, as the external debts due until 2028 do not exceed $9 billion, which constitutes mostly half of the country’s total external debt,” Saleh said in a statement to the official agency. He indicated that “there are coordinated repayment mechanisms between the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank, which are highly governed and transparent, and are settled accurately within a strict program and allocations in the federal general budget, and are settled periodically with the international creditor community.”
He added, “The total external debt does not exceed what was mentioned above, and the amounts mentioned in the Central Bank’s letter require explanation, as Iraq is not obligated to pay them, especially the $41 billion, as they are subject to the Paris Club agreement of 2004, which wrote off 80% or more of those debts related to the Iran-Iraq war, or what are called pre-1990 debts.”
He continued, “As for the domestic debt referred to in the Central Bank’s letter, it is the result of the accumulation of financial, security, financial and health crises that the Iraqi economy has been exposed to over the past decade and since the war on ISIS terrorism. This has been accompanied in recent years by severe geopolitical factors that have exposed global oil markets to a decline in prices due to the decline in growth in the global economy.” He explained that “the borrowing undertaken by the current government as domestic debt constitutes only 18% of the total precautionary domestic debt included in the federal general budget (the three-year budget) pursuant to Law No. 13 of 2023 for the years 2023-2025 .”
He stated that “the internal debt, which amounts to approximately 91 trillion dinars, is mostly held by the government banking system and under high-level financial and technical management,” noting that “there are specialized committees working in cooperation with international consulting companies to convert a large portion of that internal public debt into productive investment tools within a national fund to manage the aforementioned internal debt in a manner that aims to stimulate the real economy and transform debt obligations into investment opportunities in the real sector of the Iraqi economy.” He explained that “Iraq is currently experiencing the best periods of stability due to the strength of foreign reserves, the function of which is to stabilize the purchasing power of the Iraqi dinar and sustainable development.”
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