Baghdad, The Parliamentary Finance Committee reassured the community circles by approving the general budget tables, while revealing its recommendations to the government to ensure the implementation of the governorates' requirements. The Head of the committee, MP Atwan Al-Atwani, said in a joint press conference today, Monday, that "the House of Representatives officially approved the budget tables with general expenditures of 211 trillion dinars distributed by about 156 trillion current budget and 55 trillion investment budget, indicating that the committee began its work on May 21 and continued periodically on a daily basis to analyze and study the financial data and compare it with the 2023 budget, as it analyzed the data for the current budget and the investment budget and diagnosed the framework of the increase and the weaknesses and strengths in this budget. " He added, "We aspire to have sufficient financial allocations for the governorates in line with the needs of these governorates and the sustai nability of their development projects, indicating that coordination has taken place between the Finance Committee and the government to study the reasons that led to the decrease in these allocations," noting that "there are secured and funded financial allocations in the spending units for the governorates within the Food Security Law, with a limit of 5 trillion and 800 billion dinars." He continued, "The 2023 budget was approved and the allocations for regional development were increased after they arrived from the government by about 2.5 trillion dinars to become about 10 trillion, and these governorates and spending units were funded by about 3 trillion out of the original amount of 10 trillion, and there is a remaining amount of about 6 trillion and 500 billion dinars." He added, "We have confirmed that the government is obligated to continue to secure food security funds in spending units, as well as the government's pledge to continue funding for the remainder of the 2023 budget, which amounts to 6 trillion and 500 billion dinars, and the amount of financial allocations of about 3 trillion was added to it, which gives the governorates comfort to work," adding, "The government must pledge to continue funding spending units and these amounts cannot remain ink on paper because there is procrastination and disappearance that caused a delay in completing projects." The head of the Finance Committee confirmed that "the committee identified a number of observations, including the concentration of investment spending in the general government sector, which means that all investment projects, when completed and put into service, are transformed into operational projects, which means that any project added from the investment enters the scope of the current budget, and this creates a great burden on the government." He continued, "We recommended that the government rely on the private sector, and be a real partner to the public sector in managing these institutions, especially since there are more than 100 proj ects related to hospitals in various governorates. The government must also think about changing and diversifying consumption, implementation and management patterns, and must adopt a national plan for the mechanism of involving the private sector in these projects." He added, "There are investment projects identified for important key sectors, especially the electricity sector, which has allocated about 17 trillion dinars, but the system still suffers from many outages and poor performance. Source: National Iraqi News Agency
Thursday, November 07, 2024