The Democrat confirms the existence of seriousness to pass the oil and gas law within 6 months
Baghdad – Mawazine News, the representative of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, Sharif Suleiman, affirmed today, Saturday, the existence of seriousness and political consensus on approving the oil and gas law within a maximum period of 6 months, while noting that the difference of visions regarding the value of oil and the classification of funds delayed sending the draft budget law to the parliament deputies.
Suleiman told the official news agency, followed by Mawazine News, that “the oil and gas law is the result of multiple sessions, and is considered one of the very important and basic laws in state administration, especially with regard to the oil and gas file between the region and the center.”
He added, “There is seriousness by all political forces at this stage to approve the oil and gas law within a maximum period of 6 months,” stressing “the importance of approving the oil and gas law as a roadmap to bridge differences.”
He pointed out that “the law needs to put in place new frameworks because there have been changes in the same country and many things,” noting that “the management of the fields that were discovered after 2003, and the issue of other fields that were discovered before 2003, all of these matters are framed by constitutional articles, so These constitutional frameworks must be relied upon to set the mechanisms, provisions and basic points of the oil and gas law.
Regarding the next year’s budget, Suleiman said: “Dialogues between the central government, the Kurdistan region, and the Ministry of Finance are still continuing regarding the general budget law for the next year 2023, but until now the visions have not been unified about the value of oil determined in the budget, the amounts, how the budget is classified, and other issues.” that have been sent to the House of Representatives.
And the Ministry of Planning announced, on Wednesday (11/30/2022), the agreement of the Diwani Order Committee 22151 for the year 2022 headed by the Deputy Prime Minister – Minister of Planning, Muhammad Ali Tamim, (in charge of resolving outstanding issues with the Kurdistan region), and the delegation of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq headed by the Minister of Planning In the region, Dara Rashid Mahmoud agreed to form joint technical committees to consider outstanding issues between Baghdad and Erbil, especially the oil and gas law, the budget, and other issues.
The two parties agreed, according to the statement of the Ministry of Planning, that the outstanding issues be dealt with, in accordance with what was stipulated in the Iraqi constitution, and the ministerial platform of the government of Prime Minister Muhammad Shia al-Sudani, which was voted on by the House of Representatives.
It is worth noting that the committee formed under the chairmanship of the Deputy Prime Minister – Minister of Planning, includes in its membership the ministers of oil and finance, the heads of the Office of Financial Supervision and the Border Crossings Authority, the economic advisor to the Prime Minister, the head of the legal department in the General Secretariat of the Council of Ministers, in addition to the director of SOMO.
Mawazin.net