A parliamentary bloc announces a boycott of the session to vote on the budget and reveals the reasons
A parliamentary bloc announces a boycott of the session to vote on the budget and reveals the reasons
3/19/2021 15:13
[Baghdad-Where]
Today, Friday, the National Approach bloc announced its boycott of the budget voting session, because it included economic and social catastrophic paragraphs and the inequality of the central and southern governorates compared to the region.
The bloc said in a statement, “Because the parliament did not respond to the fundamental amendments that we demanded, therefore we announce our boycott of the voting session on the 2021 budget, and we hold others responsible and the consequences of it economically and socially.”
The statement added: “We recall the most important amendments that we proposed:
– Restoring the exchange rate to what it was previously, as the damages of this decision became evident early, and the Finance Committee suggested allocating (500) billion dinars as compensation for contractors contracting with the government for the price difference, and it is better to notice the damage to it. Millions of Iraqis are poor, covered by the social welfare network, and with limited income, and all of these damages necessitate restoring the exchange rate to what it was previously.
– Abolishing Article (38) which permits the privatization of all productive and service sectors of the state and allows the participation of investors and contractors in ownership of oil and gas fields, power stations, Iraqi Airways aircraft and government banks.
– Abolishing articles (41 and 42) that allow the sale of state-owned agricultural lands to those who have the right to dispose of them at a value much less than its real value, and it will create widespread social conflicts.
Abolishing Article (47) that permits the sale of the state’s financial assets, including industrial, infrastructure, and others.
– That the deficit does not exceed 3% of the GDP, meaning that it does not exceed 7 trillion Iraqi dinars.
– Expanding the titles of sovereign expenditures to include (the Ministry of Oil, Transport and Water Resources, and the inclusion of the security and defense sector in all its ministries and institutions, as well as the emergency reserve).
We reject the proposal to withhold the ration card from a family whose monthly income is one million dinars, and we demand that it be increased to include withholding only those whose monthly income exceeds two million dinars.
– We present the proposal of the Al-Nahj bloc on the region’s articles:
A- Abolishing the first paragraph of Article (11) that calculates the Kurdistan Region’s dues for previous years from 2014 to 2019 despite not delivering oil and non-oil revenues.
B – Paragraph Second – A of Article (11) is amended to be (the region is obligated to deliver no less than 460,000 barrels per day to SOMO, and in the event that its production exceeds this amount, it is obligated to deliver it also to the Iraqi Oil Marketing Company (SOMO).
C- Adding Article Seven of the Current Deficit Financing Law (determining the Kurdistan region’s share of the total actual spending (current expenditures and investment project expenditures) after excluding the sovereign expenditures specified in the Federal Budget Law of the Republic of Iraq for the fiscal year 2021) and adding the expenditures of the Ministry of Oil, the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Resources Water and the inclusion of the security and defense sector in all its ministries and institutions to be included in the sovereign expenditures as well as the contingency reserve) provided that the Kurdistan region is committed to handing over at least (460) thousand barrels per day to the Iraqi Oil Marketing Company (SOMO) exclusively, as well as deliver Mazad on those quantities and all non-oil revenues In the event of non-compliance by the region, it is not permissible to pay the expenses to the region, and the violator of this text bears legal responsibility.
D- Paragraph III (a, b, c) which obliges the federal authorities to pay the region’s loans and financial obligations that it concluded in the years (2014 to 2019) is canceled .
E – Article (11 – third) – to be reformulated (the region is obligated to pay the loans owed to the Iraqi Trade Bank)
– to oblige mobile phone companies to pay their fines and financial obligations within thirty days, otherwise the license is withdrawn from them and the contracts concluded with them are reviewed in a way that achieves the lifting of unfairness For the Iraqi state and achieve the highest economic benefit for it.
– Canceling the oil licensing rounds and replacing them with a formula that achieves the highest benefit to the Iraqi state and
eliminates previous injustice .
We oppose continuing with foreign loans, as they have far-reaching effects on the country’s sovereignty and economy.
– To oblige the Ministry of Electricity to review investment contracts for electricity production stations to ensure that unfairness from the Iraqi state is lifted.
We reject the proposal of the Ministry of Health to contract with private sector companies to manage newly constructed hospitals.
We reject the additive article that requires the Ministry of Education to invite the private sector to implement printing of textbooks, and we suggest restricting it to public state companies only.
– Rejection of the article that allows the governorates to contract with developers because they will witness secondary speculation on the one hand. Through these projects, the citizen will be charged the cost of building the health services infrastructure, electricity, water and sewage streams to increase the profits of the developers (investors) !!! .
The statement concluded by saying: “Knowing that these objections represent part of the total of forty essential requirements that are necessary to amend the 2021 budget.
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