Al-Sudani’s advisor comments on “drowning Iraq in debt”: “Under control.”
The financial and economic advisor to the Iraqi Prime Minister, Mazhar Mohammed Salih, commented on Tuesday on reports that Iraq is “drowning in debt” and warnings of a bleak future for the economy.
“Iraq’s outstanding external debts total less than $20 billion, half of which are due by 2028, and specific annual disbursements are allocated for them in the federal budget,” Saleh told Shafaq News Agency. He stressed that “Iraq has never defaulted on its debts, thanks to a government coordination process and precise technical mechanisms between the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank, which has given the country a good reputation among external creditors.”
He added, “What is being raised about the domestic public debt, which amounts to more than 92 trillion dinars, is that it is held exclusively by the government banking system, and less than half of it is in the investment portfolio of the Central Bank of Iraq, which is managed with high technical and financial efficiency.”
Saleh stressed that “there is no cause for concern, as long as there are repayment mechanisms under discussion within official economic circles, and monetary and fiscal policies are working to extinguish the domestic debt through objective solutions, including mobilizing real, re-invested wealth within an integrated national fund.”
He explained that “the current model is based on converting debt into investment rights in productive projects, which leads to stimulating real investment activity and guarantees debt repayment,” noting that “Iraq possesses enormous economic wealth that undoubtedly exceeds the size of these debts.”
The Central Bank of Iraq revealed in an official statistic that the size of the country’s debts incurred during the year 2024 amounted to 54 billion and 601 million dollars, a decrease of 2.94% compared to the year 2023, which recorded 56 billion and 207 million dollars, while the internal public debt until the end of last June (2025) amounted to 85 trillion and 586 billion dinars, an increase from its level last year, which amounted to 83 trillion and 80 billion dinars.
Shafaq.com