Oct 21 (Reuters) - Iraq's fiscal deficit is expected to hit 11.9 percent of economic activity in 2016, the finance minister said on Wednesday, as the country struggles to fund fighting against Islamic State in the face of dropping crude prices. The government's budget proposal, which awaits parliamentary approval, envisions expenditures of 106.9 trillion dinars ($95 billion) w
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BAGHDAD: Nearly one in five members of the Iraqi workforce are government employees, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Thursday, as he attempts to reform the country's bloated and often-corrupt civil service. "We have a state with more than four million employees," Abadi said in televised remarks from a conference on implementing economic reforms in Iraq. "Neighboring c
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UNDP: Iraq, Human Development Report 2014 - Iraqi Youth: Challenges and Opportunities Download the Report as PDF file
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Iraq’s government has certainly tried to address the deficit in the version that was approved on Dec. 23, in which the budget reached 123 trillion Iraqi dinars (nearly $100 billion). Yet, in the end, all of these attempts cannot address Iraq’s budget crisis for 2015 or the following years, given the nature of the Iraqi economy, which mainly depends on oil production, as well as
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The Iraqi parliament still has not been able to approve the draft general budget for 2014, prompting Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to warn of the possibility of a major financial crisis and a disruption of state institutions. As the conflict continues between Baghdad and Erbil regarding Iraqi Kurdistan's share in the state budget, there is a pressing need for the government t
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