Minister of Planning: optimistic about the investment allocations
Translated by IRAQdirectory.com - [09/02/2007]
The Minister of Planning and Development Cooperation, Dr. Ali Baban, expressed his optimism about the investment allocations within the budget of 2007, pointing out that the achievements of the budget for the past year were modest.
He said in press statements that the resources of the 2007 budget have relied mainly on Iraq’s oil revenues and slightly on the contributions of donor countries.
Baban also confirmed that the investment allocations in the 2007 budget exceeded $ 10 billion which will be spent on various projects, starting from the sector of oil and electricity, and then the rest of the productive sectors. We hope such projects will develop the Iraqi economy, improve the living standard of Iraqis and reduction unemployment.
He added that there are a lot of promises, including the project of Iraq’s Era, which we studied and came out with its basic documents with our partners and friends in the world in general. At the present time there are no specific commitments so far, but we hope that the promises of the donor countries will come true. As for the achievement percentages of last year budget, they were modest in general; sometimes they amounted to 10 % in some ministries. There are ministries achieved 60% and the others 70%, and there are circumstances leading to this modest results like delaying the Iraqi ministries’ formation till the middle of last year.
Dr. Baban reiterated that the funds financing those projects are mainly from the Iraqi budget, while donors provided negligible amounts, including the ones provided by the International Bank and other international institutions, noting that Iraq relied on proper and specific mechanisms in the financial dealings with the donors, but the because of the phenomenon of corruption emerged many cases of delay. On the other hand, Iraqi economy is witnessing a real transition and most of the countries that experienced such transition had similar corruption cases. The minister added that Iraqi economy moved from the comprehensive planning stage to the open market under exceptional political, economic and security conditions.
AI
