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http://washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080130/FOREIGN/458073763/1001
Iraq not using oil cash to rebuild
By Sharon Behn
January 30, 2008
Increased Iraqi oil revenues stemming from high prices and improved security are
piling up in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York rather than being spent on
needed reconstruction projects, a Washington Times study of Iraq's spending and
revenue figures has shown.
U.S. officials and outside analysts blame the collapse of the country's
political and physical infrastructure for Baghdad's failure to spend the money
on projects considered vital to restoring stability in the country.
Out of $10 billion budgeted for capital projects in 2007, only 4.4 percent had
been spent by August, according to official Iraqi figures reported this month by
the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). The report cited unofficial
figures saying about 24 percent had been spent.
Meanwhile, some $6 billion to $7 billion from last year's budget is "being
rolled over" and invested in U.S. treasuries, said Yahia Said, director of Iraq
Revenue Watch, part of the private watchdog group Revenue Watch Institute.
"The government is broken," said Mr. Said, speaking by telephone from Baghdad.
"The country's midlevel bureaucracy has either fled the country or been purged
in de-Ba'athification, [and] a lot of ministers are politically appointed and
not professional."
The result is that orders go out from the ministers in Baghdad, but there is no
structure or staff at the middle level to carry out the instructions.
"It's like they lost the manual for driving the government," said Mr. Said, who
is working to put that blueprint back together. "They lost the landing
instructions for landing the airplane."
A quarterly report to be released today by Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the U.S. special
inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, says rising production and high
prices could produce a revenue windfall for Iraq this year, according to the
Associated Press.
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