Iraq plans to stop international borrowing this year, 15 JAN

   Iraq plans to stop international borrowing this year

 Mawazine News-Baghdad
Advisor to the Prime Minister for Technical Affairs, Engineer Muhammad Al-Daraji, Chairman of the Committee to Review Foreign Foreign Loans to Iraq, revealed that the government is seeking to stop loans that do not benefit the country.

Al-Daraji said, in a statement to the newspaper (Al-Sabah) followed by / Mawazine News / "Iraq entered after 2003 a new wave of foreign loans and debts due to low oil prices and insufficient budget in most cases."

He added that "there was clear confusion and differences in estimating the size of Iraq's new foreign debt due to the existence of other debts before 2003," noting that "the new debts must have a clear picture of them in order to take appropriate measures in dealing with them in order to preserve the country's economy and its credit rank globally."

Al-Daraji explained that "loans are distributed between ministries and provinces in exchange for projects, and the task of the committee, which formed the inventory of loans and find out what projects, ministries or provinces benefited from them and what is their condition," noting that "debts entail interest that burdens Iraq and must be liquidated and reach final results in knowing the size of debts and how to repay them and their value for the economy."

The Prime Minister's Advisor for Technical Affairs said that "these debts may have been taken for certain reasons, but there is no added value to the Iraqi economy, which makes us study the debts again and proceed with the implementation of the projects for which the debt was borrowed, and if they are useless, they must be stopped and the debts returned to improve Iraq's financial situation internationally."

It is noteworthy that foreign foreign loans to Iraq are estimated at $ 25 billion, and the formation of this committee comes after those loans burdened the country during the past twenty years.