BAGHDAD: Iraqi legislators on Wednesday endorsed a bill for the country’s 2017 federal budget with about 85 billion U.S. dollars and a deficit of about 18 billion dollars, reported Iraqi official television. “The parliament approved the proposed 2017 budget by majority of the lawmakers who voted in all the budget items,” the state-run Iraqiya channel said. The budget approval came following several heated sessions of debate among the various political blocs over multiple controversial items, including payment of the Kurdish security forces, known as the Peshmerga.
The proposed budget was based on an average oil price of 42 dollars per barrel and export of 3.75 million barrels of crude oil per day (bpd), including exporting 250,000 bpd from the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan and 300,000 bpd from federal oilfields in the province of Kirkuk. Parliament also approved a 17 percent payment from the national budget’s total expenditures to Kurdistan’s regional government.
According to Iraqi law, the annual budget must be approved by the Iraqi presidency following parliamentary approval. As crude oil prices have sharply dropped in markets worldwide in the past few years, the government and parliament were obliged to design the 2017 draft budget in light of the de facto situation and proposed public expenditure reduction. The budget also focused on diversifying national income sources which depends mainly on oil revenue, as well as allocating money to support the needs of displaced people and to reconstruct their areas, recently freed from extremist Islamic State (IS) militants.
The budget approval comes as Iraqi security forces backed by an anti-IS international coalition are carrying out a major offensive to drive out IS militants from their last major stronghold in and around Mosul. Iraqi economy relies on oil for over 90 percent of its revenues. In 2010, Iraq announced that its proven oil reserves had increased to 143.1 billion barrels from the previously estimated 115 billion barrels.
