By Xinhua,
Baghdad : The Iraqi government said Tuesday that it has proposed a draft supplementary budget for 2008 amounting to 21 billions U.S. dollars, the largest expenditure bill in Iraq’s history.
The add-on spending submitted to the Council of Ministers for approval would brought to near 70 billion dollars the budget amount for this year.
Iraqi government spokesman Ali Al-Dabbagh said in a statement that the supplementary budget consists of 7.4 billion dollars of capital investment funds and 13.6 billions of operational budget going to the Ministry of Provinces, which coordinates the work of the central government and the local authorities.
Iraq passed the 2008 budget bill of 48 billion dollars in February, months behind the schedule mainly because of bickering over the share for the Kurdish autonomous region.
The draft will be discussed in the coming few days. If approved, it will proceed to the parliament for review.
Iraq sits on the world’s third largest proven oil reserves of about 115 billion barrels. Oil incomes account for over 90 percent of the national revenues.
The country has landed a windfall of soaring crude prices and is pressing forward to tap deeper into its oil fortune.
However, factors including unstable security, political strife and the lack of experts have limited the government’s ability to execute its budgets.
The U.S. Government Accountability Office said in its June report that the Iraqi government spent just 11 percent of their capital investment budgets in 2007, a drop from previous spending rates of 14 and 13 percent in 2005 and 2006, respectively.