PFC: The fiscal deficit in Iraq is temporary

Baghdad - INA

  The Parliamentary Finance Committee confirmed today, Friday, that the current financial deficit in Iraq is temporary.

 Committee rapporteur, Ahmad Al-Saffar, said in a statement to Al-Iraqiya News Channel, "The current deficit is a temporary and embarrassing for the government and parliament, because there is a slight shortage of salary funding of the month of September, which the government was more than 46 days late in paying."  The budget project or the submission of a new loan law. The issue will be delayed by more than a week, 10 days, or maybe more, and this will lead to a lot of embarrassment.

 He added that "according to the public finance literature, the Iraqi constitution and the Financial Management Law, if there is a slight deficit, the Minister of Finance has the powers to take immediate action," indicating that "there are two types of debt; real fixed debt, which results from a significant decrease in real revenues versus public expenditures, which is a deficit."  Continuous and permanent, and it is called fixed debt, but the current deficit in Iraq is a temporary deficit, and the debt is called a debt in the public finances. Temporary treasury bills may be offered that express the existence of revenue but it delayed. There is a time mismatch between immediate public expenditures and public revenues that may be collected in the future.

 He continued, "Iraq does not have a financial crisis because it has resources, but the state and the government cannot access them, so the current deficit in Iraq is a temporary, and the debt is the deficit can be paid in the future," noting that "he proposed to get out of this distress and great embarrassment."  The government has the right to move the Minister of Finance to offer bills and immediate borrowing from Iraqi banks or the central bank to pay salaries. Then the move will take place a week later when Parliament starts its sessions and the normal situation in Baghdad returns after the end of the forty-day visit.