“Part of the economic and financial problem we have is this expenditure on the popular committees, on the militias on the army, on the contracts," Zebari told Reuters. “The key area where the budget was recklessly spent was on these military efforts without proper planning and on the volunteers. I think they are paying their salaries, their food, their clothes and weapons and so on. Over US$1 billion since June for the militias.”
Another reason as to why the Iraqi government has not made an announcement about spending on the security crisis is that it may not know what is being spent.
Under al-Maliki, Baghdad kept spending money – even though the national budget had not been passed in Parliament. Apparently around 65 percent of Iraq’s planned budget has already been spent, but this has been spent illegally, without any official oversight.
“The last government spent an estimated US$70 billion worth of oil revenues but it did so without fulfilling its own obligations and without clear documentation that could show the money’s paper trail,” says Anwar Saeed, a local economist.
There is no doubt that the whole country could soon be dealing with very serious economic problems that will affect locals for some time to come. Three provinces have already declared that they’re out of funds: Anbar, Karbala and Wasit. Others are expected to join them soon if the government doesn’t manage to pass the budget for 2015 and address the shortage of funds.
(Terrorism image via Shutterstock)
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