Parliament sets conditions for the government to accept borrowing

The Parliamentary Finance Committee announced today, Friday, its position regarding the Iraqi government’s resort to external debt to fill the country’s budget deficit, considering the internal borrowing a better option.

The committee’s chairman, Ahmed Al-Saffar said that, “cutting the salaries does not help Iraq dealing with its financial crisis,” noting that, “the best solution is internal financial borrowing without affecting the salaries of employees”.

Al-Saffar added that, “the government asked the council of Representatives to approve internal and external borrowing, but that approval is conditional. The government must submit a budget draft to the Parliament in order to evaluate Iraq’s actual need to borrow money”.

“It is impossible to give open-ended consent to the government to resort to financial borrowing without knowing Iraq’s need for funds, the term of loan repayment, the interest rate and the exchange process,” stressing that, “internal debt is better than the external; due to the availability of financial liquidity in the central bank and government banks.”

The council of Representatives had finished during its session, Wednesday, the first reading of the draft law on internal and external financial debt to finance 2020’s fiscal deficits. The representatives voted on a resolution obliges the Iraqi government to submit 2020’s Budget Law no later than the end of this month