MP says budget won’t be endorsed before cabinet OKs it

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: A legislator from the Iraqi parliament’s financial committee said the 2010 federal budget would not be endorsed by the committee before the cabinet approves it. “The modified budget we have received will be endorsed by the committee only after the cabinet approves it. Hopefully, it would be okayed by the cabinet by mid-next week so that the parliament passes it by the end of next week,” Sami al-Atroushi told IraqiNews.com news agency. “The budget, after the modifications, exceeded 84.600 trillion Iraqi dinars, which upped the deficit by more than 22.9 trillion Iraqi dinars and this should be covered by an increase in the oil prices among other resources,” Atroushi added. He said that the sum of 263 billion Iraqi dinars, which had been cut from the Iraqi Kurdistan region’s quota for the 2008 supplementary budget, was added, in addition to the sum of 250 billion Iraqi dinars for investment expenditure. AmR (P) 2