Oil prices are still higher than their budget estimates and we are trying to keep spending to the minimum
A financial advisor to Prime Minister Muhammad Shiaa Al-Sudani revealed features of the financial budget schedules for the year 2024.
Mazhar Muhammad Saleh told {Al-Furat News} agency, “The announcement of the variables in the financial tables for the past year 2024 was undoubtedly in conformity with the constants adopted by Law No. 13 of 2023, the Federal (Tripartite) General Budget Law, specifically in the axis of the hypothetical deficit amounting to approximately 64 trillion dinars, and did not stray far.” Estimates of the budget tables in the planned deficit paragraph, as stated in the law above.”
He added, “Despite the above, there are important trends in the management of the public budget, whether on the side of public expenditures, in which the spending ceiling reached 211 trillion dinars, or the revenues and deficit itself, and they are summarized as follows:
1- Oil prices are still higher than their estimates in the tripartite budget of $70 per barrel, with a percentage change.” Positively exceeding 16% above the approved price above, as we approach the middle of the fiscal year, while maintaining the export rates approved in the budget and managing oil production efficiently and in accordance with international agreements with OPEC regarding the issue of controlling production quotas.
2- There is high discipline in Maximizing non-oil revenues, especially tax and customs revenues, specifically after adopting automation, modern methods, and information technology in tax and customs assessment, estimation, and collection.
3- Striving to impose discipline on operational expenditures and keeping spending on them within acceptable minimum levels.
4- Ensuring to raise the efficiency of investment spending and operating all approved projects. This is to ensure a high growth rate in the gross domestic product, at a rate more than twice the population growth rate, by launching the movement of new projects without delay or stop.
Saleh noted that “the pattern of public spending, according to the schedules announced, is characterized by accuracy, objectivity, and self-savings, which contributes to reducing the resort to financing the actual deficit, even when needed, through internal borrowing and within limits that ultimately do not exceed the accepted international standard percentage for financing the deficit, which amounts to 3%.” “of the country’s total gross domestic product or slightly more than it.”
He pointed out “not to forget that the efficiency of annual spending in the operational and investment aspects is an important issue in determining the total annual public spending as planned.”
Alforatnews.iq
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