With sessions that extended until dawn… Iraq’s parliament passes the largest budget after 2003
With sessions that extended until dawn… Iraq’s parliament passes the largest budget after 2003
2023-06-12
After difficult labor and sessions that extended until dawn for four days, the House of Representatives finished, at dawn today, Monday, voting in full on the draft federal financial budget law for the next three years, which included 68 articles.
The draft budget carried contentious articles and points that ignited the fire of conflicts between the political blocs inside the dome of Parliament. Some of them were finally resolved, and the rest were affordable and agreed upon. However, the shares of the Kurdistan region in the budget, in Articles 13 and 14, were the prominent sign. Voting on it was postponed at times, and the session was suspended at other times. .
The journey to complete the largest financial project in Iraq began on Thursday, June 8, 2023, which witnessed the vote on 6 articles (the first, third, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth), while the vote on the second article was postponed and the fourth was deleted.
Parliament was determined to complete the project as soon as possible, so it held a session, on Friday, which also witnessed a vote on the text of the second article of the budget after the amendment, which was postponed from the first session, and on 11 new articles (9, 10, 11, 12 and 13), while postponed Vote on Articles 14, 15, 16 and 17.
The third session was held on Saturday, June 10, 2023, where members of the House of Representatives voted on 18 new articles in the budget, namely (14, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40 and 41).
The fourth and final session was held yesterday, Sunday, and the parliament voted on all the paragraphs, including the postponed ones, which numbered 28 articles (16, 17, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53). , 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68).
The end of the voting series does not mean the success of the project, as the largest budget in Iraq’s history included all “incoming and outgoing” and according to the requirements of the government and parliament.
Prime Minister Muhammad Shia al-Sudani revealed at the budget conference that “the share of the Kurdistan region in the budget amounts to 12.6, and the total budget amounted to 197 trillion and 828 billion dinars as follows: the operational budget amounts to more than 150 trillion dinars, the investment budget is more than 47 trillion, and the deficit in The budget amounts to 63 trillion dinars.
He explained that “total revenues amount to more than 134 trillion dinars,” stressing that “oil revenues amount to more than 117 trillion dinars based on the price of oil at $70, and non-oil revenues amount to more than 17 trillion dinars.”
In the field of numbers, Al-Sudani mentioned the following:
* The total budget is more than 197 trillion dinars
* The operating budget amounts to more than 150 trillion dinars
* The investment budget amounted to more than 47 trillion
* The budget deficit amounts to 63 trillion dinars
* Total revenues amount to more than 134 trillion dinars
* Oil revenues amount to more than 117 trillion dinars based on the oil price of $70
* Non-oil revenues amount to more than 17 trillion dinars
* The share of the Kurdistan region in the budget is 12.6 percent
* More than 12 trillion dinars of indebtedness will be repaid this year
* The petrodollar will be two trillion dinars distributed among the provinces
* The development of the regions in the budget will be 2.5 trillion dinars
* 400 billion dinars have been added to the loans of small projects in the Ministry of Labor
* Increasing the capital of the Industrial Bank by 400 billion dinars to support the private sector
* An increase in some allocations, including medicines, by an amount of 300 billion dinars, to become more than a trillion
* Allocating one trillion dinars for the Iraq Development Fund draft law
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