Approval of Iraq's Budget with a Record Deficit: Fears of Increased Spending

  • Baghdad, Republic of Iraq
  • 13 June 2023
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The Iraqi parliament approved the largest budget bill in the country's history for the current year, with a total of 198 trillion and 910 billion dinars (153 billion dollars), while the total state revenues within the draft law amounted to 134 trillion and 552.9 billion.

The amounts of fiscal deficit within the budget law were estimated at more than 64.36 trillion Iraqi dinars, at record levels of more than two-thirds of the last deficit in Iraq's budget recorded in 2021. In its recently approved budget, Iraq relied heavily on oil revenues, which amounted within the law to 117.2 trillion dinars. While the total non-oil revenues amounted to 17.3 trillion, which means that the Iraqi budget has become hostage to global oil prices, as it estimated the price of a barrel of oil at $ 70, and the amount of daily exports is 3.5 million barrels per day, including 400 thousand barrels per day from the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

Source (Al-Araby Al-Jadeed Newspaper, Edited)

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