Iraq moves to results-based budgeting in 2027
Shafaq News- Baghdad
For two years, Iraq has run without a national budget. Salaries and essential spending have been covered month to month under a stopgap rule that releases one-twelfth of the previous budget at a time, while political deadlock, regional conflict, and swings in oil prices kept a full budget out of reach.
Parliament passed a three-year law covering 2023 to 2025 but never approved the final year's spending, and no budget was passed for 2026 at all.
That is the backdrop to a change the government of Prime Minister Ali Faleh al-Zaidi now says will reshape how the country spends its money. Starting with the 2027 federal budget, Iraq will adopt what is known as program and performance budgeting, a system that ties funding to specific programs and measurable results rather than to the raw size of allocations.
Read more: Delayed 2026 budget pushes Iraq toward 2027 plan
In plain terms, ministries will be funded for what they are meant to achieve, not simply for what they spent last year. The Cabinet approved the framework at its June 2 session, working with the World Bank, and has presented it as a way to curb waste, tighten oversight of public money, and lift more revenue from sources other than oil.
The shift will arrive in stages. MP Hussein Al-Darraji, a member of the parliamentary Finance Committee, told Shafaq News that in 2027 the new system applies to a single ministry, Electricity, and two provinces, Al-Diwaniyah and Saladin. The 2028 budget widens it to five ministries and five more provinces,, before later budgets extend it across the rest of the state.
Read more: 2026 budget: Iraq confronts unprecedented fiscal strain
The 2027 budget is also significant simply for existing. It is the first full spending plan Iraq will have drafted in two years. Mudhir Mohammed Saleh, the financial adviser to the prime minister, told Shafaq News that the Finance Ministry expects to complete the draft law by September, after which it moves through the Ministerial Council for the Economy and the Council of Ministers before reaching parliament, where a budget must ultimately be approved. Saleh said it is still too early to put a figure on the budget's total size, which will not be fixed until the draft is finished.
A 2026 budget, by contrast, is no longer expected. With the year already half gone, the government concluded there was little point in approving one and turned its attention to 2027 instead.
Read more: Iraq’s budget paralysis: How the 1/12 rule reduced state finances to salary payments
