American website: Iraq’s budget suffers from a deficit of $49.3 billion
American website: Iraq’s budget suffers from a deficit of $49.3 billion
11-6-2024
Information/Translation..
The latest update to Iraq’s budget is more complicated than it seems, despite the Iraqi parliament voting on the country’s 2024 spending and revenue schedules, a necessary adjustment to the unique budget approach that began in 2023, an Atlantic Council report confirmed on Wednesday.
The report, translated by Al-Maalouma Agency, stated that although the three-year budget approach was intended to serve as a forward-looking financial framework for the period 2023-2025, in practice it was a one-year budget that was repeated annually, rather than an integrated multi-year forecast.
“The spending tables reveal projected spending of IQD 211.9 trillion (about $162.9 billion), projected revenues of IQD 147.8 trillion (about $123.2 billion), and a deficit of IQD 64.0 trillion (about $49.3 billion). These figures indicate a slight year-on-year increase in both spending and revenues while maintaining a roughly flat deficit – although this consistency can be misleading,” he added.
“Overall, federal revenues will increase by 9.9 percent over 2023, primarily due to a 58.0 percent increase in non-oil revenues, with these assumptions based on previous year revenues; however, it is unclear how these increases will be achieved as the only categories that will increase significantly are fees and other revenues; there are no details on what these revenues will be other than electricity tariff revenues that will be deposited directly into the Ministry of Finance’s bank account,” he continued.
The report indicated that “the assumptions of oil export revenues remain consistent with those of the 2023 budget, i.e. revenues of 116.3 trillion Iraqi dinars based on exports of 3.5 million barrels per day, at an average price of $70 per barrel of crude oil; as well as the revenues that will come from federal exports of 3 million and 100 thousand barrels per day and exports of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq of 400 thousand barrels per day.”
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