تغيير استراتيجية الموازنة العامة و أهميته في النهوض بالاقتصاد العراقي

الملخص EN

The Iraqi economy is a rentier economy that depends on the production and export of crude oil, and the state's general budget revolves around this rentier phenomenon, and even devotes it, which is problem that the research try to solve.

For more than half a century the general budget has adopted the method of so-called balancing items and appropriations so that they are classified administratively, qualitatively and economically for the sake of the main objective of exercising oversight to ensure that ministries and government institutions spend within the limits of the appropriations that are estimated by the legislative authority within the budget law.

However, the main dilemma in this method is represented in multiple deficiencies, perhaps the most prominent of which is the lack of clarity of the objectives for which the funds are allocated and the lack of standards for measuring the actual performance of government units and knowledge of the efficiency in implementing various programs, which weakens rational government spending and promotes waste of public funds.

The researcher tries to shed light on the basic problems of the public budget by adopting a time series for the years (2005-2019) and here lies the importance of the research, the problems are the weakness of investment expenditures compared to operational expenditures and the increase in total expenditures in recent years, and the dominance of oil revenues in financing the budget compared to with other revenues as well as the widespread and growing financial deficit during the research years.

Although many economic and other reasons stand behind these problems in the general budget, the researcher has focused on the role of applying the method of balancing items and appropriations in the mentioned -above problems.

Based on the above considerations, the researcher sees the necessity of making a change in the general budget strategy in Iraq and searching for an alternative method, which the researcher believes can be embodied in the balance of programs and performance, as coordination must be made between the ministries of planning and finance towards defining specific goals that serve the country's economy and developing programs that need to be implemented by the general economy units, which must be accompanied by the development of performance measurement standards that contribute to linking inputs and outputs, and in a way that contributes to achieving efficiency and effectiveness in the delivery of government programs and activities.

Despite the difficulty of implementing the program and performance budget in Iraq, which the researcher realizes, and its need for many requirements, it is worth the sacrifice and efforts and spending money in order to reach a general budget that ensures the rationalization of public spending and enhances the efficiency of the use of available material and human resources, Even if it is necessary to select some government projects and units to start with, as some countries have done.