The framework criticizes Al-Sudani’s government: The budget delay has frozen promotions and threatened people’s livelihoods.
The framework criticizes Al-Sudani’s government: The budget delay has frozen promotions and threatened people’s livelihoods.
2025-04-22 06:51
Shafaq News/ A Shiite Coordination Framework MP criticized Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani’s government’s delay in submitting the amended budget tables for 2024 and 2025 to parliament on Tuesday, considering this delay a violation of the 2023 budget law.
MP Ibtisam Al-Hilali told Shafaq News Agency, “The government has not adhered to the provisions of the 2023 budget law, which obligates it to submit the amended schedules for the years 2024 and 2025 for approval by Parliament. This is considered a violation of the law.”
She explained that “the government’s delay in submitting the budget has led to the suspension of employee transfers, promotions, and bonuses, as well as the suspension of payments to various segments of society, including farmers.”
Al-Hilali added, “The Ministry of Finance is currently only paying employee salaries, without adding any new allocations or project funding, due to the lack of budget schedules for 2025.”
Al-Hilali warned that “if the government does not submit the budget schedules to Parliament in the coming period, the current year will be without a budget, and all entitlements, job promotions, and project funding will be transferred to the 2026 budget.”
In a previous statement, the House of Representatives’ Finance Committee expressed its surprise at the government’s delay in submitting the 2025 budget tables, despite prior promises. The committee noted that the ministers of planning and finance confirmed the tables had been submitted to the cabinet, but parliament has yet to receive them, without providing any explanation.
Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani acknowledged, in a statement during his visit to Dhi Qar Governorate on Monday, the actual deficit in the 2024 budget, noting that spending was conducted according to specific priorities, and that his government had spent 156 trillion dinars out of a planned 213 trillion, distributed between salaries, operating expenses, and ministry and governorate projects.
Last year’s budget amounted to 211 trillion dinars, with revenues estimated at 144 trillion and 336 billion dinars, while expenditures amounted to 210 trillion and 936 billion dinars, and the deficit was 63 trillion and 599 billion dinars.
It is noteworthy that the Iraqi Parliament voted in June 2023 on the draft general budget law for the fiscal years (2023, 2024, 2025).
shafaq.com
