Project costs are being inflated. Parliamentary warnings about the debt burden on the next government.
Project costs are being inflated. Parliamentary warnings about the debt burden on the next government.
10-18-2025
Al-Maalouma/Exclusive:
Member of the Parliamentary Services and Reconstruction Committee, Baqir Al-Saadi, warned on Saturday of the danger of the continuous rise in internal and external debts, as a result of the mismanagement of public funds and the absence of effective financial oversight. He stressed that most of the expenditures for current projects are financed through loans, which constitutes a heavy burden on the next government.
Al-Saadi said in a statement to Al-Maalouma, “The absence of a general budget and the lack of clarity in spending policy during the current period have led to the spending of huge sums on projects with limited economic feasibility,” indicating that “many projects in the governorates were completed at financial costs that exceed their actual value by five times in some cases.”
He added that “the funds spent from the current year’s budget did not go mostly to strategic or productive projects, but rather to duplicate service projects with weak feasibility,” noting that “this pattern of ill-considered spending exacerbates the financial deficit and drains the state’s resources without tangible results on the ground.”
He pointed out that “the increasing reliance on internal and external debt to cover current expenditures and ongoing projects will lead to the accumulation of obligations on the public treasury, placing a heavy financial burden on the next government that will be difficult to overcome without real economic reforms.”
He stressed “the need to subject all projects to a thorough financial and technical evaluation before disbursing funds, and to put an end to the policy of ill-considered expansion in borrowing, in order to preserve financial stability and prevent the collapse of the economic system.”
It is noteworthy that the Central Bank had previously announced that Iraq’s internal debts amounted to approximately 91 trillion dinars, while external debts reached more than $54 billion, a worrying indicator of the increasing financial burdens on the state in the coming years.
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