Will Iraq have a 2025 budget? Finance Committee doubts it

Shafaq News/ Iraq’s Parliamentary Finance Committee does not expect the government to forward the detailed tables of the 2025 federal budget to the legislature, a lawmaker said on Sunday.

Committee member Jamal Kocher said parliament “could pass the 2025 tables if they arrive, but there is no seriousness in sending them,” adding, “In the meantime, the government will only pay salaries.”

He listed three hurdles: a lack of cash to implement new projects; failure to release all allocations for 2023 and 2024 because of the same liquidity crunch; and fear that approving fresh spending so close to parliamentary polls could funnel money into election campaigns.

Earlier, fellow committee member Uday Awad told Shafaq News that a 2025 budget may not be prepared due to the lack of real will to send it to Parliament.

The Prime Minister’s Economic Adviser, Mudhhir Mohammed Salih, argued work on the tables was delayed by amendments related to the costs of extracting and transporting the Kurdistan Region’s oil, which required recalculation.

The three-year budget law covering 2023-25 obliges the cabinet to update spending tables annually, but lawmakers now fear Iraq will enter 2025 without a voted fiscal plan.