Baghdad The government’s financial advisor, Madhar Muhammad Salih, confirmed: “Increasing the amount of Iraqi oil exported next year will end 65% of the financial deficit.”
He said in a statement to the National Iraqi News Agency / NINA /: “The increase in the exported quantities of Iraqi crude oil in the year 2022, specifically after the end of the restrictions of the “OPEC +” agreement, which restricted the quantitative quotas of member countries, will clearly reduce the financial deficit of the next budget, if total spending ceiling is adopted in the 2022 general budget with the same ceiling in the General Budget Law 2021 of 129 trillion dinars, with a possible increase of 5% in total spending with an adjustment to the price of a barrel of oil to be $60 per barrel instead of the previously announced $50.
The Ministry of Finance announced last August that it had begun preparing the budget for next year.
The value of the deficit in the 2021 budget, as approved by Parliament, amounted to 19.8 billion dollars, compared to 23.1 billion dollars in 2019, knowing that Iraq did not approve the 2020 budget due to political tension.
The total value of revenues in the 2021 budget amounted to about 69.9 billion dollars, calculated based on the export of crude oil on the basis of a price of 45 dollars per barrel, and an export rate of three million and 250 thousand barrels per day.
The value of the 2021 budget was about $89.7 billion, which is 30% lower than the last budget approved in 2019.
Source: National Iraqi News Agency