Iraq: More than 30 million $ of external debt
Shafaq News / The Parliamentary Finance Committee revealed, on Friday, the amount of the Iraqi external and internal debts.
Committee rapporteur, Ahmad Al-Saffar, told Shafaq News agency that the committee stopped external borrowing since 2019, but the financial crisis, the health pandemic, and the government's inability to pay employees' salaries led to approve a one-time 5 billion $ external borrowing from the World Bank, in addition to Borrowing more than 50 trillion dinars - about 5 billion dollars - from Iraqi banks.
Al-Saffar confirmed that Iraq's external debts exceeded 30 billion dollars, while the internal debts exceeded 50 trillion Iraqi dinars, pointing out that the committee obligated the government to implement a program of financial and economic reforms within 60 days, and the deadline expires on the 24th of August, the reforms includes Rationalization of expenditureand not completely relying on oil revenues.
He also stressed the importance of using the external borrowing for productive projects that boost the economy without any accumulation of debts to no avail.
“The committee had prepared a financial reform paper that would be presented to the program in the coming periods, as well as unifying the governmental and parliamentary reform papers.” He declared.
Al-Saffar revealed the Ministry of Planning's efforts to prepare a reduced budget for the coming months of this year, and that will be discussed after the return of the Prime Minister and the Iraqi delegation from Washington.
The decreasing in oil prices on world markets as a result of the Corona crisis has caused a financial crisis and a difficulty of securing the salaries of employees.
The Iraqi Council of Representatives approved earlier the internal and external borrowing law to confront the financial crisis and secure the salaries amid warnings of economic consequences accompanying borrowing.
