Government advisor: The government has succeeded in managing fiscal policy.
The Prime Minister's financial advisor, Mazhar Mohammed Salih, explained on Friday the reasons for the delay in submitting the budget schedules, while stressing that the government has succeeded in managing the country's financial and economic policy.
Saleh said, "The financial compass reading, which required the submission of the 2025 budget tables for legal approval under Article 77/Second of the Budget Law, was truly delayed for two fundamental reasons. The first was to await the amendment to the three-year general budget law regarding the value of the region's oil contracts and the costs of transporting its oil, which were not approved until last February. The other reason relates to the fluctuations that global energy markets were exposed to and the effects of global oil prices on the general budget, which also required rereading some financial constants and variables, whether revenues, expenditures, deficit financing and its sources, more than once due to international geopolitical and economic problems and the major issues that occurred in the global economy at a rapid pace, which led to the generation of volatile shocks in close periods of the current fiscal year, which necessitated hedging against external shocks."
He added that "all these factors led to the delay in submitting budget schedules to review some of its inputs and outputs," noting that "there is significant and ongoing cooperation between the legislative and executive authorities in monitoring and managing the country's financial affairs, with understanding, interaction, and optimization of great importance to ensuring the economic stability the country is experiencing."
Regarding the impact of delayed budget schedules on projects included in the investment section, Saleh pointed out that, “Based on the Federal General Budget Law No. 13 of 2023, the three-year budget, the federal financial policy was formed based on an approach called ‘fiscal space’, which gave it the high capacity to move dozens of approved and previously suspended strategic government projects forward into implementation.
This is what distinguished it with a highly active development wheel in implementing service projects that the country is witnessing without interruption, and its results have become tangible thanks to the success of the three-year budget, in addition to the major projects approved in the 2023 and 2024 budget schedules, which are currently ongoing without interruption.”
He stressed that “the state’s investment approach is proceeding in line with the sustainability of economic development and in accordance with the high positive results currently achieved in growth rates and the great economic stability that the country is witnessing, whether in terms of declining unemployment rates, increasing economic growth, and price stability, in an active and compatible trilogy achieved as a result of the success of the country’s financial and economic policy without interruption in the wheels of public spending, including the current year 2025.”
He continued, "As far as the rights and entitlements acquired in the operational aspect of the general budget are concerned, but have not been disbursed and are contingent upon the submission of the 2025 financial schedules, these are legally protected rights reserved for their beneficiaries and are not subject to statute of limitations. They are merely a matter of timing and will be disbursed upon the approval of these schedules or any adjustment that does not conflict with the law." link