KTFA Members "Sunday News" 12-29-19

KTFA:

Samson:   Parliament's schedule for tomorrow's session

12/29/2019 14:39

The Media Department of the House of Representatives published the agenda for tomorrow’s session, which included voting on a proposal for the law of the first amendment of the Federal Financial Administration Law.

It also included completing the discussion of the draft law of the second amendment to the Makhz Retirement Law.

According to the document, the session will start at one in the afternoon.    LINK

Samson:  $ 56 a barrel of oil in the 2020 budget

29th December, 2019

The reform decisions taken by the resigned Iraqi government headed by Adel Abdul Mahdi led to an increase in financial expenditures in the budget for the year 2020 to more than 10 trillion dinars in the next year's budget due to the employment of thousands and the referral of a large number of employees to retire and others, as the financial deficit reached 48 trillion after Increase the price of oil in the budget from $ 53 to $56

And the transfer of "Iraqi 24" website from sources described by Al-Mutala'ah in the Ministry of Finance and the Parliamentary Finance Committee, "The general conditions in Iraq contributed to the delay in sending the draft budget budget, due to the reform decisions of the resigned Iraqi government, which led to increased financial expenditures of more than 10 trillion dinars Noting that "the planned deficit is still in violation of the Financial Management Law, which occurred in the fourth paragraph of Article Six, that the planned financial deficit does not exceed 3% of the gross domestic product

She emphasized that the planned financial deficit in the budget for next year reached 19% of the gross domestic product, which currently stands at 48 trillion dinars, while the gross domestic product amounts to 253 trillion dinars, "indicating that "the Iraq crisis is long and the Minister of Finance or his representative will resort to issuing uncles For ministries and state departments, the disbursement includes 1/12 or less of the total actual expenditures of current expenditures for the previous fiscal year after excluding non-recurring expenditures on a monthly basis and until the approval of the federal public budget in accordance with Article 13 of the Financial Management Law

 The informed sources noted that "the interest of the Kurds is represented in the failure to approve the next financial budget bill because the Finance Ministry continues to transfer funds to the Kurdistan region, which amounts to 455 billion dinars per month as a result of the majority of deputies refusing to pass the agreement concluded by the resigned government with Erbil

 On the other hand, a member of the Finance Committee, Naji Al-Saeedi, said that the draft budget budget for the year 2020 is still with the Council of Ministers, to reduce the fiscal deficit, by raising oil prices, pressure on financial expenditures, and increasing revenues, "noting that" the planned financial deficit at the beginning of a project The budget was 81 trillion dinars and now it reached 48 trillion dinars.” Al-Saeedi added that the price of oil in the budget rose from $ 53 to $ 56, noting that “the resigned government failed to find new financial revenues or work from the extent of corruption in the customs that will provide the state 8 trillion dinars annually

 A member of the Finance Committee mentioned the share of the Kurdistan region in the next budget is 12.7%, "excluding the implementation of the agreement concluded between Baghdad and Erbil in the budget for the next year, noting that Iraq will pay the amount of 18 trillion dinars in debt dues and benefits to international organizations and countries with a budget next year  LINK

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Samson:  Abdul Mahdi's office explains why the final accounts were not sent to the House of Representatives

16:04 - 29/12/2019

On Sunday, the spokesperson for the resigned prime minister, Saad Al-Hadithi, explained the reason for the failure of the cabinet to send the final accounts from 2013 until this year to the House of Representatives despite its promise to submit it before resigning.

Al-Hadithi said in a statement to "Al-Maalouma", that "the cabinet continues to complete the final accounts of previous years and completed a portion of them," noting that "the legal obstacle is behind not sending it to the House of Representatives."

He added that "the government's shift to conduct daily business after its resignation prevents it from sending draft laws," noting that "final accounts are sent with the Federal Budget Law as an appendix and are discussed within the House of Representatives."

The resigned prime minister, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, confirmed earlier that the cabinet will send the parliament the final accounts from 2013 until now.   LINK

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Samson:  Secret oil companies control $ 3 trillion in fortunes

29th December, 2019
Secret oil companies control the vast majority of the world's oil and gas assets, but the average person has only heard of those companies that have been attacked by missiles or have been implicated in prominent corruption scandals.  The writer Anis Alec said in a report published by the American Oil Price that the state-owned oil and gas companies control at least $3 trillion of oil and gas assets, compared to about $2.5 trillion in 2017, and these companies have the equivalent of 90% of all known reserves.

National oil companies

The writer mentioned that this means that national oil companies control the same wealth that all billionaires in the United States possess, or nearly twice the assets of global multilateral development banks. If we count the annual revenues alone, the Chinese government company, Sinopec, which is specialized in exploration, production, refining, marketing and distribution, is considered the largest oil and gas company in the world in 2018. This title is given - when taking into account net income - to Saudi Aramco, which recorded a net income in 2018 worth $ 111.1 billion

According to the annual revenue metrics at the end of 2018, four out of the world's top ten oil and gas companies were state-owned, such as Sinopec, Aramco, the China National Petroleum Corporation and Russia's Gazprom. As for the six places from this list, Royal Dutch Shell (fourth place), BP (fifth place), Exxon (sixth place), Total (seventh), and Valero (eighth) and Philips 66 (10th place). Despite its economic position, most of the 71 national oil companies are very secretive, and Norwegian Equinor is one of the few exceptions, while the ambiguity of the rest of the national oil companies poses a great risk to finance and governance, especially when they are burdened with huge debt. The NOC database included in this regard no fewer than 19 national oil companies with assets in excess of $ 50 billion.

Government revenue

At least 25 of the national oil companies account for 20% or more of government revenue, with the Nigerian National Oil Company and the Nigerian National Oil Corporation collecting about half of the general government revenue from oil and gas sales. The writer mentioned that the database also reveals a pattern of weak public reports issued by a number of national oil companies, as only 20 out of 71 national oil companies have revealed sufficient information for the ten most important indicators in this sector.

More than half of the national oil companies fail, however, to publish the audited financial statements by independent auditors, and companies - such as the National Petroleum Corporation of the Congo - are unable to even disclose the balance sheet. The writer added that the national oil companies may borrow to finance new investments or to maintain significant discretionary expenditures or implement specific political programs, and that the loans may be in the form of debts from other oil companies such as the Nigerian National Oil Corporation, or from banks such as the Ghana National Oil Corporation, or from Another government entity like Sonatrach that borrows from the Algerian Central Bank, or by issuing corporate bonds such as the Russian company Rosneft, in addition to oil-backed loans from other traders or national oil companies such as Kazmunai Gas in Kazakhstan.

Borrowing

The writer emphasized that the borrowing of national oil companies has its benefits, and that the need to borrow can motivate oil and gas companies to develop sound governance practices in an attempt to improve their credit ratings, and that the best example of this is the recent Saudi Aramco bond issuance that provided a sneak peek of their financial performance, And that excessive debt can create great risks. He pointed out that some of the national oil companies such as the Norwegian Equinor and the Colombian Ecopetrol have continuously achieved strong returns for public investment, and that the national oil companies have nonetheless struggled in many countries to turn into actors with commercial efficiencies, and in extreme cases have contributed significantly to widespread corruption on Large scale, not to mention the lack of accountability for the role it plays in climate change.

National oil companies may control three trillion dollars of oil, and enjoy the luxury of being opaque, and in some cases completely corrupt, but their counterparts from international oil companies not owned by the state still fluctuate the scales in general on revenues and incomes.   LINK

Don961:  $ 3.07 billion United Nations operational budget

Saturday December 28, 2019
New York / agencies 

Yesterday (Saturday), the United Nations General Assembly approved an operating budget for $ 3.07 billion, which includes - for the first time - Russia's opposition, joint financing of the war crimes investigation mechanism in Syria.

This budget (which has become one year after it was two years earlier) represents a slight increase compared to the 2019 budget of 2.9 billion, and the increase is due, according to diplomats, to the additional tasks assigned to the United Nations secretariat and to inflation and exchange rates.

The issue is particularly related to the mission of the observers in Yemen and the political mission created during the autumn in Haiti, and also to the continuation of the work of mechanisms for investigating crimes committed in Syria since the war broke out in 2011, as well as in Burma after the crackdown on the Muslim Rohingya minority since 2017.

For the first time, the budgets of these mechanisms will be funded in 2020 from mandatory contributions from the 193 member states, after they were so far funded by voluntary contributions, and Russia proposed multiple amendments during negotiations at the meeting of the Fifth Committee on Budgetary Affairs of the International Organization and in the plenary session of the General Assembly.

On Saturday, Moscow said: "The investigation mechanism related to Syria is illegal," while Damascus considered that "the mechanism does not have a mandate from the Security Council."

The UN operational budget is separate from the annual budget for peace operations (about $ 6 billion) that is approved each year in June.

In addition, the website "Wikileaks" published 4 leaked documents from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, ruling out that chlorine may be the cause of death in Douma, east of Damascus.

"Four documents from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons; revealed that toxicologists have excluded deaths from exposure to chlorine," WikiLeaks reported in a tweet via its Twitter account.

The site added that, according to letters exchanged between members of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, it appears that the organization's senior official, Sebastian Praha, has ordered the withdrawal of the report with irregularities regarding the alleged chemical attack on April 7, 2018 from the organization's archive, and deleted "all traces of " This document.   LINK