ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq’s planning minister announced on Wednesday that the 2025 budget does not allocate funds for new investment projects and only funds ongoing ones.
Minister Mohammed Ali Tamim held a meeting with the parliament’s finance committee to discuss non-oil revenues and investment projects.
“The planning minister clarified that the 2025 investment budget tables do not include any new projects, but rather include funding for ongoing projects only,” said a statement from the finance committee.
During the meeting, the committee’s chairman “expressed his concern about the halt in project listings and the delay in funding ongoing projects, noting that these reasons are a prelude to a return to the problem of stalled projects,” the statement added.
The committee also addressed the issue of project listing suspensions, delay of funding for ongoing projects, the financial entitlements of provinces, and the delay in announcing the population census results.
"The reason for not adding new projects to the 2025 budget chart is that the money for 2023 and 2024 projects has not yet been fully spent." Jamal Kocher, a member of the finance committee who was present at the meeting, told Rudaw.
In the first 11 months of 2024, out of more than 55 trillion dinars of investment budget in Iraq, 22.8 trillion has been spent, according to the finance ministry.
In June 2023, Iraq passed a three-year budget that included a record $152 billion in spending.
Hastyar Qadir contributed to this report.
