Advisor to the Prime Minister for Financial Affairs, the appearance of Mohamed Saleh, announced that the liberation operations cost Iraq about 13 billion dollars, as Iraq made borrow 13 billion dollars from the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and European countries.
Saleh said in a statement: “The external debt of Iraq currently stands at 37 billion dollars and also includes the debts of the Paris Club.”
Commenting on this, the head of the Economy and Investment Committee in the previous parliament, Harith al-Harithi, said: “These sums were spent on the war operations and on the foreign forces present in Iraq, not to mention the sums of compensation for the people of the affected areas, which have not been paid yet.”
Al-Harthi added, “This number is not significant compared to the losses suffered by the cities occupied by the organization, in addition to the military equipment that was left after the army’s withdrawal.”
Al-Harthy added: “The loans are very big, and the Iraqi citizen will bear their consequences, as they came according to a plan put in place by some countries for control of Iraq.”
According to officials at the Central Bank, Iraq’s debt is not classified as excessive debt, because it is within the rational range, compared to GDP, while economists point out that this debt is divided into eighteen destination countries, including debts with long-term repayment as in Japan’s loans And it has debts due annually.
Late last year, a representative committee said that Iraq’s foreign debt had reached the stage of the threat to the economic future. Member of the Parliamentary Finance Committee Ahmed al-Jubouri said, “The committee previously suspended debt, especially foreign in the 2019 budget, at a time when there is an obligation to continue debt as it was It existed during the war against ISIS gangs in the governorates of Nineveh, Anbar, and Salah al-Din.
He pointed out that “debts, especially foreign affairs, amounted to 125 billion dollars.”
He warned that “its survival portends a danger to the economic future of Iraq,” noting that “there are 20 paragraphs of debt that will be in the 2020 budget.”
Source: Al-Mada Newspaper
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