What are the “technical reasons” that impede the budget?
Yes Iraq: Baghdad… The push and pull still hangs over the fate of the 2021 budget, especially after the agenda of the House of Representatives session today, Monday, was devoid of the draft budget.
While there is talk about the fact that Article 11 related to the share of the Kurdistan region and its financial obligations towards Baghdad is the focus of the dispute that obstructed the agreement on the budget, parliamentary statements come out from outside the Finance Committee and for different political blocs, recording many new objections about the budget that go beyond the issue of the dispute with the Kurdistan region.
The talk began to escalate about the fact that returning the price of the dollar to its previous era, has become a major controversial issue standing in the way of passing the budget as well as job grades and provincial shares and other files.
The Financial Committee is “optimistic”: only technical reasons delay the budget!
However, the Finance Committee is still talking about “resolving matters” and the fact that the dispute is related only to Article 11, promising the existence of “semi-final” to these differences, and that the postponement of the vote on the budget came for “technical reasons”, without clarifying the concerned with these technical reasons, especially with the approaching year Ending its first quarter without balancing.
Where a member of the Parliamentary Finance Committee, Muhammad Ibrahim, said today, Monday, that “the budget was postponed to tomorrow’s session, Tuesday, due to the presence of some technical measures, as well as in order to complete some aspects related to it and then submit it to a vote.”
He added, “There is near-consensus between Baghdad and Erbil to pass the budget, as the postponement of its presentation in Parliament is to give more time about the agreement between the two sides on the contentious articles in the budget.”
He stressed that “Article 11 of the budget is the focus of the dispute between the two governments, especially with regard to the region’s dues since 2004 and the quantities of oil exported across the region, as the issue is still revolving around political dialogues.”
What are the technical reasons?
Returning to previous statements, MP Riyadh Al-Masoudi says, “The problems and disagreements about the draft budget law for the year 2021 are not related only to the share of the Kurdistan Region, but there are technical differences, including the issue of the exchange rate of the dinar against the dollar, as well as the issue of including functional degrees in the law, in addition to the surplus sums. With the rise in oil prices, and others ”.
Al-Masoudi ruled out “the possibility of passing the budget bill without the agreement of all political parties on it, but this agreement has not happened until now.”
From here it appears that the “technical differences” are related to fundamental issues, as according to Al-Masoudi’s statement, the issue of the dollar’s price as well as job grades falls within the technical differences that the Finance Committee talks about.