Iraq’s 2024 budget could be increased by nearly $5.4 billion to fund projects which were approved in the previous year and were not completed, an Iraqi deputy has said.

Mustafa Karawi, a member of Parliament’s Finance Committee, said the cabinet is authorised to increase spending through the landmark 2023-2025 budget which was endorsed by Parliament in mid 2023 and is set at $153 billion in each year.

“The 2024 budget could be increased to 2026 trillion Iraqi dinars ($158.4 billion) from IQD199 billion ($153 billion),” Karawi told the official Iraqi news agency Ina on Sunday.

“Another increase will be a result of some contracts which were signed in 2023…they have to be included in the 2024 budget as some of them have not been completed.”

Karawi said only around 60 percent of the allocations for projects by the Construction and Housing Ministry were funded in 2023 and that the rest must be included in 2024.

The three-year budget in Iraq, which controls the world’s fifth largest recoverable oil deposits, was based on average oil price of $70 a barrel and production of 3.5 million bpd.

(Writing by Nadim Kawach; Editing by Anoop Menon)

(anoop.menon@lseg.com)

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