Shafaq News / The Parliamentary Finance Committee confirmed, on Tuesday, that the draft general budget law for 2020 comes to secure borrowing and the salaries of employees and retirees for four months.
A member of the committee, Naji Al-Saeedi, told Shafaq News Agency, "The General Budget Law arrived yesterday, Monday, to the Presidency of the Parliament and it was not sent to the Finance Committee to review the articles and paragraphs and know the real numbers and data that the government adopted in the 2020 budget," adding, "the general budget has become a reality for only four months and it is not an actual one. Rather, it is covered by the financial borrowing law to secure and disburse salaries of employees and retirees for the last months of the current year".
Al-Saeedi added, "The oil revenues for recent months amounted to two billion and 600 million dollars. The total amount of revenues became 3 trillion dinars after adding up other resources", noting that, "the government needs 6 trillion and 500 million Iraqi dinars to secure and pay the salaries of employees and retirees per month".
The Parliamentary Finance Committee recently disclosed the purpose of approving the country's financial budget for the current year 2020, even though eight months has elapsed.
It is noteworthy that submitting the federal budget for the year 2020 by the government to the Iraqi parliament has been delayed due to the continuous popular protests since last October. This led to the resignation of the previous government headed by Adel Abdul Mahdi and its transformation into a caretaker government that cannot submit the financial budget bill to Parliament.
Earlier in the day, an informed source revealed that the Ministry of Finance did not release the employees' salaries for September due to the lack of cash.
The source told Shafaq News that the Ministry of Finance is awaiting the approval of the budget that includes the lending clause to proceed with the payment of salaries of employees and self-financing departments for September.