We are waiting for bond payout confirmations. Things are moving - we just don’t know how quickly though…
I was always told once we hit 30-40% of those historic bonds we are roughly 3-5 days of us going. We do not know what percentage has been paid out yet.
We are very hopeful that all the payments that have been initiated happened this weekend...We are waiting to find out if bond holders have fully spendable money today. We are watching this today and tomorrow. There are definitely some people with NDA’s. They point blank told me they are on NDA’s and can give me no details.
Will Iraq have a 2025 budget? Finance Committee doubts it
Shafaq News/ Iraq’s Parliamentary Finance Committee does not expect the government to forward the detailed tables of the 2025 federal budget to the legislature, a lawmaker said on Sunday.
Committee member Jamal Kocher said parliament “could pass the 2025 tables if they arrive, but there is no seriousness in sending them,” adding, “In the meantime, the government will only pay salaries.”
He listed three hurdles: a lack of cash to implement new projects; failure to release all allocations for 2023 and 2024 because of the same liquidity crunch; and fear that approving fresh spending so close to parliamentary polls could funnel money into election campaigns.
Earlier, fellow committee member Uday Awad told Shafaq News that a 2025 budget may not be prepared due to the lack of real will to send it to Parliament.
The Prime Minister’s Economic Adviser, Mudhhir Mohammed Salih, argued work on the tables was delayed by amendments related to the costs of extracting and transporting the Kurdistan Region’s oil, which required recalculation.
The three-year budget law covering 2023-25 obliges the cabinet to update spending tables annually, but lawmakers now fear Iraq will enter 2025 without a voted fiscal plan.
Article: “The 25,000 denomination accounts for the largest share of banknotes in Iraq."
Quote: "Al-Obaidi Mentioned in a post on Facebook The number of banknotes issued by the Central Bank during January 2025 amounted to 6 billion banknotes, with a value of 100.3 trillion Iraqi dinars, an increase of 4.7% compared to January 2022, when the number of banknotes issued amounted to 5.7 billion banknotes, with a value of 78.2 trillion dinars.
Shafaq News/ Iraq’s Central Bank (CBI) reported a significant decline in government spending and a corresponding decrease in the volume of currency in circulation by the end of 2024.
In a report on monetary and financial indicators, CBI said government spending dropped by 5.54% in December, totaling 12.95T IQD (about $10B) compared to 13.71T IQD (about $10.5B) recorded in November.
The decline in spending was accompanied by a reduction in the currency issued, which fell by 0.34 trillion dinars to reach 100.54T IQD ($76.8B) in December, down from 101.34T IQD ($77.4B) in November.
Last February, German market and consumer data platform Statista forecasted that Iraq’s government spending as a percentage of GDP would decrease in the coming years.
According to Statista’s report, government spending in Iraq accounted for 48.43% of GDP in 2024, marking the highest share in the past five years. However, it is projected to fall to 47.94% in 2025 and further to 45.1% by 2029.