In fact, Saleh added, the 2016 budget doesn't reflect bankruptcy or deficits, it simply reflects the need for more austerity. “We need austerity to confront our problems, it's a necessity, but reducing the deficit in the long term involves more effective measures, like encouraging the private sector,” Saleh says. “We intend to transform Iraq's economy into a real market economy by 2030. We consider 2017 the real beginning of this plan.”
Not all messages were that reassuring though. In a newspaper interview, Iraq's Minister of Finance, Hoshyar Zebari, said that 2016 was going to be a tough year, following on a tough 2015.
“During the past year we've been able to keep paying employee salaries but this year we are very concerned about a major shortfall coming up in April,” Zebari said. “We may not be able to pay all salaries and that is something that people need to understand and be realistic about. We are hoping that oil prices will increase again, at least by September. Because 90 percent of the Iraqi economy depends on oil.”
Meanwhile MP Haitham al-Jibouri, a member of the Iraqi Parliament's Finance Committee in Baghdad, had more bad news.
“The sum of employees' salaries is around US$45 billion. We expect the country’s revenue from oil sales to reach about US$15 billion – and that includes oil being exported out of Iraqi Kurdistan,” he told NIQASH. “More money – but not more than US$10 billion – will come from external and internal borrowing. But even with that, it seems certain this financial crisis is going to continue.”
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