Iraq's parliament has dropped its borrowing law. The chairman of the Finance Committee says the 2027 budget will carry what that law was meant to cover, and that budget is due in parliament by October 15.
The same weekend, a headline claimed Iraq is about to devalue the dinar. The lawmaker it quotes said herself it is not a final decision.
The borrowing law
Uday Awad chairs the Finance Committee in Iraq's parliament. On Sunday he said the borrowing law is not required at this stage, because the 2027 budget arriving from the government will include the provisions needed. He did not say Iraq will stop borrowing. He said nothing separate is required. He also said bank reform has become a necessity, that some of the banks barred from dealing in dollars belong to political parties, and that clear results on those banks will appear in the coming days. Iraq never passed a budget for 2026. The 2027 budget now carries the deficit, the financing, the oil price and the IQD's rate in a single document.
Everything else that moved
- The money — on Sunday Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi met his finance minister and the governor of the Central Bank of Iraq and ordered 3.5 trillion IQD released in 5 decisions: 1 trillion to housing, at least 1 trillion to the Trade Bank of Iraq and the Industrial Bank, 500 billion owed to contractors, 500 billion owed to farmers, and 500 billion added to the Generations Fund.
- The chairs — Nouri al-Maliki's State of Law coalition nominated Yasser Sakhil for the Interior Ministry and Haider Bahaa for Higher Education. The Kurdistan Democratic Party takes one of the 4 deputy prime minister posts. The other parties have been told to file their candidates by the middle of this week.
- The headline — a Kurdish outlet reported that the 2027 draft values $100 at 150,000 IQD, citing Finance Committee member Dilan Ghafoor. In the same interview she said “it does not mean this is a final decision.” Iraq's central bank law gives exchange rate policy to the CBI. A second article travelling with the story is from December 2020.
- The street — the dollar closed Sunday at 158,050 IQD per $100 in Baghdad, against the official 131,000.
- Kurdistan — the Region is merging 94 government banks into a single National Bank.
- Tehran — Iran's oil minister resigned, and Bessent said Iran loaded no crude onto tankers in September. The rial fell to about 2.69 million to the dollar.
The question
Our stance is that Iraq is not devaluing the IQD. A government does not pay its debts, fill its cabinet and count its money to the last dinar so that it can hand its people a weaker currency.
Credit: Written by Reset Intelligence — David E. Atterton, author of Head of the Snake (@EXIT_FIAT). More at resetintelligence.com.
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