This blog post was published on January 27 2010. §
Iraq’s 2010 budget; the missing pages
Despite the presence of the budget assigned to the three presidential entities [president, Prime Minister and parliament] in the index, scrolling through the released document of 2010 budget [Arabic, link corrected], pages and tables from chapter 4 are missing.
According to Head of the Financial Committee in the Parliament MP Shatha Al-Mousawi:
There is a “silent” agreement not to raise the subject for fear of igniting the public opinion about it.
But we have some data and figures, Ahamd Al-Chalabi revealed to Al-Mada — 21-10-2009:
Each MP in the Parliament receives a salary of US$25000 (30 million ID) monthly, and that is US$300000 annually.
Annually, MPs salaries are US$ 140 million, Ministers of US$200 million, and State officials about US$ 250 million.
Add to the above, what Adil Abdul Mehdi revealed today to Al-Sumaria 27-01-2010:
Each Vice-President receives about US$1 million as “Social Benefits” to be used in emergency cases — This money is used to support civil society organizations and the families who lost loved ones through violence, total sum of last year [2009] is US$11 million [vice-president x 3= US$33 million].
Back to Shatha Al-Mousawi and she revealed today the following:
We [Finance Committee] do not have accurate figures on the salaries and allowances of the President and his two deputies, Prime Minister and the House speaker … We asked the Finance Ministry few months ago, about the salaries of the presidential entities, and they send us the official, who gave us the estimated figures .. For example, we asked him whether the salary of the President of the Republic is more than ID 60 million … He said yes .. maybe more, he don’t know exactly.
Below is an image of the missing pages of the 2010 Budget, all numbers are in “Iraqi Dinar”. The total money assigned to the president office, Prime Minister Office and the Parliament is $ 82 million with the exclusion of the MPs salaries, Misters allowances, and vice-presidents “Social Benefits”.
US$82 million + (Chalabi’s numbers) + Adil Abdul Mehdi’s numbers = US$ 1,46 Billion. Compare this to the budget assigned to agriculture US$300 million (as an example).
