Sudanese advisor: The law currently prohibits the government from internal and external borrowing.
Sudanese advisor: The law currently prohibits the government from internal and external borrowing.
2025-12-09 03:21
Shafaq News – Baghdad
On Tuesday, Mazhar Muhammad Salih, the financial advisor to the Iraqi Prime Minister, confirmed that the government does not have the authority to borrow in the absence of a legislative authority.
Saleh told Shafaq News Agency that “the government, in the absence of the legislative authority, does not have any constitutional or legal authority that allows it to resort to sovereign borrowing, whether internally or externally. However, the law legally and legitimately permits resorting to short-term advances from the treasury, financed exclusively by state-owned banks, as one of the tools for managing government liquidity, without these arrangements being considered sovereign borrowing in the legal sense.”
He added that “this framework is based on the following legal basis contained in the Federal Financial Management Law No. (6) of 2019, namely Article (3) / Third, which authorizes the Ministry of Finance to manage public liquidity and reallocate it among state institutions in accordance with the requirements of the financial interest, as well as Article (24), which prohibits internal or external borrowing except by virtue of a law issued by Parliament.”
Saleh pointed out that “the scope of this ban applies to borrowing from outside the government sector and does not include financing arrangements within the public sector,” stressing that “the law does not include any prohibition on financial advances or temporary financing between government entities, as long as these operations take place within the public system, are short-term in nature, and are within the limits of liquidity management, not sovereign borrowing.”
The government advisor continued, saying that “this path constitutes the only legal procedure available to ensure the continued funding of the state’s basic expenditures during the current period, until the legislative authority regains its powers and issues the necessary financial legislation.”
Last month, the Federal Court decided to end the work of the House of Representatives and transform the government into a “caretaker government”.
The court stated in a document, which was received by Shafaq News Agency, that “the day of the general election to elect the new House of Representatives means the end of the term of the House of Representatives and the end of its authority to enact laws and oversee the performance of the executive authority in practice, and the transformation of the powers of the Council of Ministers from full authority to limited authority in managing daily affairs, represented by taking decisions and actions that cannot be postponed.”
On the ninth and eleventh of November, Iraq held its special and general voting in the parliamentary elections for the sixth parliamentary session, as part of a democratic practice in the political process that emerged after 2003 following the overthrow of the former Baath regime by the forces of the United States of America and its allies.
shafaq.com
