Baghdad - Al-Forat
The Council of Representatives hosted the Minister of Planning to discuss priorities for next year’s budget, with members of the Finance Committee and the Economy and Investment Committee in attendance, amid calls from MPs to review the criteria for distributing allocations among the provinces and to put stalled service projects ahead of new ones.
During the session, the minister presented investment spending indicators for the current year, saying 61% of investment projects had been implemented by the end of September, and that the ministry had drawn up a list of priority projects in education, health, water and sewerage to be included in the next budget, in addition to the infrastructure projects covered by the national rehabilitation plan.
Calls for fairness to poorer provinces
Members of the Finance Committee called for the poverty map and deprivation indicators to be used as the basis for distributing regional development allocations, rather than population alone, noting that provinces such as Muthanna, Diwaniyah and Dhi Qar still record the highest poverty rates in the country and that mud-brick schools are still standing in a number of their districts and sub-districts.
“Fairness in distribution does not mean arithmetical equality; it means money going where the need is greatest,” said the head of the parliamentary Finance Committee.
For his part, the Minister of Planning said the ministry was updating the distribution formula by adding indicators on the share of mud-brick schools and of areas without water networks, noting that controlling operating expenses was a prerequisite for increasing the share of investment, and that the ministry would submit a detailed report to parliament on stalled projects and the reasons for their delay before the end of the year.
A member of the Economy and Investment Committee said hundreds of projects included in previous budgets had not been completed because of delays in releasing funds and the weak capacity of the contractors, calling for every new allocation to be tied to a binding timetable and to completion rates reviewed every three months.
Next steps
The two sides agreed to hold a joint workshop bringing together the Finance Committee and the ministries of planning and finance before the draft budget is sent to parliament, in order to settle disputes over spending ceilings early and avoid the delays that accompanied the approval of previous budgets. The Council then adjourned its session to a later date to complete its discussion of the committees’ reports.
