Iraq’s 2027 budget draft sets 217T dinar spending
Shafaq News- Baghdad
Iraq’s draft 2027 federal budget totals 217 trillion dinars ($164.9B), with a projected deficit of 50 trillion dinars ($38B), parliamentary Finance Committee member Abbas Hayal told Shafaq News on Tuesday.
Hayal said the figures were discussed during the committee’s meeting with Finance Minister Faleh Al-Sari on the draft budget, which sets oil at $58 per barrel, assumes exports of four million barrels per day, and sets the exchange rate at 1,500 dinars per US dollar. The proposal also provides for moving contract and daily-wage workers onto permanent payrolls and creating 100,000 contract positions, half of them allocated to ministries and security institutions.
The 100,000 contract positions are expected to be distributed among Iraq’s provinces according to population, with many earmarked for graduates from earlier cohorts who have remained without public-sector employment.
In a statement, the Finance Committee said the meeting also addressed the distribution of spending between line-item and program- and performance-based budgeting, alongside efforts to diversify state revenues, reduce reliance on oil and contain the deficit.
The meeting followed criticism from the Finance Committee that the Finance Ministry had prepared and advanced the draft without sufficient consultation with parliament.
In September, Iraq’s Ministerial Council for the Economy approved the draft 2027 federal budget and referred it to the Council of Ministers. Under Iraq’s Finance Administration Law, the draft is due to be submitted to parliament by October 15.
Iraq had adopted a three-year budget covering 2023–2025 under former Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani, but parliament did not approve the 2025 spending schedules before the fiscal year ended, and no federal budget law was passed for 2026.
