Member of the Parliamentary Finance Committee, Mustafa Al Karawi, revealed the most prominent challenges facing the 2025 budget, while indicating that the “most dangerous thing” is the halting of investment projects.
Al-Karaawi said, during his hosting on the {Free Talk} program broadcast on Al-Furat satellite channel this evening, that “securing salaries is a talk directed at the people, but the biggest challenge in the 2025 budget is the suspension of investment projects that will be directly affected, followed by operational projects,” stressing that “this delay will leave major economic repercussions.”
He added that “the subject of the oil and gas law represents a radical solution to end the oil file with the Kurdistan Region and regulate financial relations between the two sides, but the region has not yet committed to delivering any financial revenues to Baghdad, although the Ministry of Finance has proven the delivery of all salaries of the region’s employees with official documents, while the Kurdistan government has not provided evidence of the delivery of its oil revenues to the federal government.”
(This is also why the DFI fund still remain under the control of the US banks, while they want to release it but not under until these disputes with Kurdistan and worked out. So the article it deceiving as oil revenues are in petro-dollars paid into the DFI fund. They are really talking about the illegal sales of oil not monitored by Baghdad and sold and paid directly to Kurdistan, which is illegal to do.)
Al-Karaawi pointed out that “the objections submitted by the Finance Committee to Article 12 of the budget may not receive a response,” expecting that “it will be passed as happened with other controversial laws during the last parliament session.”
Regarding the Personal Status Law, Al-Karaawi explained that “this law is not controversial in nature, and cannot be used as a political bargaining chip. Including it in the basket of controversial laws is unjust, as it relates to a law that is not binding on all Iraqis.”
Al-Karaawi stressed that “these challenges reflect the current political situation and its direct impact on financial planning and strategic projects that Iraq relies on to achieve economic development.”
