subject: Will The Parliament Approve Iraqi Budget For 2013? [print this page] Ibrahim Rikabi of the Coalition of State Law said on October 28, 2012 that, "The Council of Ministers has audited the budget year 2013 and discussed extensively discussed by the Ministry of Finance to assess the States need for the purpose of construction and reconstruction and Alroatib her."
So, how much was approved by the Cabinet? A staggering 138 trillion dinars is the approved draft to cover all the necessities and investments for the year 2013. Is Iraq capable of releasing such a huge amount of money? Well, given the figures that they have 90 USD per barrel and 2.9 million barrels of oil production within 24 hours, 130 trillion dinars for a year budget is acceptable.
However, what about the current deficits which was drawn to be about 16.17 billion dollars? How would the country cover up the discrepancy? It is never easy when deficits are discovered within an organization or even just within your range of budget. There could be a lot of reasons why there is a discrepancy but, most of the time, corruption is the real deal.
Luckily, deficit is to be covered from the 2012 budget of the Development Fund which has been reserved by the Federal Reserve Bank of NY branch for quite some time now. Iraq still has a receivable of about 47.29 billion dollars allotted for investments.
So, what would be the terms? It was agreed that 21% from the total budget is allocated for electricity within Iraq, 14% for security, 40% for present and future investments and the rest is for Iraqi government operations and wages. However, Iraq still has to persuade the Parliament to grant or approve the 18% raise of its budget which is still reviewed otherwise; they will really fall for a big deficit which might no longer be covered by their Development Fund.
A lot of questions have been raised without definite answers and what drives every Iraqi citizens thought is, "will the Parliament approve the whole budget?" Would they be so kind to approve the said amount? What about the present Kuwait debt that the country has for years now? Will trillion of Iraqi dinars be able to pay the large sum of debt? If the Parliament will approve an increase of 18% from the total budget of 2012, what are the assurances that the money will be effectively circulated?
