Nyt 061211
L’Irak non riesce
a spendere i miliardi delle sue entrate petrolifere
JAMES GLANZ
Il governo iracheno
ha i capitali, ma non è in grado di investirli:
– per il
ricambio nel personale di governo
– corruzione
endemica e carenza di tecnocrati preparati per la conclusione di contratti e
per la gestione di progetti complessi;
– ma anche per
il timore da parte dei burocrati delle misure anti-corruzione introdotte da americani
governo.
Il governo iracheno
ha speso solo il 20% del suo bilancio di capitali per la ricostruzione, pari a
$6MD, la metà dei quali doveva essere utilizzata per andata per la costruzione
di raffinerie, riparazioni di terminale per l’export, di oleodotti; i ministeri
che meno hanno investito sono quello del petrolio, nonostante oleodotti e pompe
petrolifere sabotati e danneggiati, e quello delle abitazioni e costruzioni; il
ministero per le risorse elettriche ed idriche ha invece speso i ¾ del bilancio
a disposizione.
Il bilancio statale
complessivo è di $32MD, quasi tutto proveniente dalle entrate petrolifere.
La maggior parte
del bilancio va in spese correnti, con circa $8MD per stipendi e pensioni per i
parlamentari e $6MD per sussidi statali per cibo e combustibile.
Persino il capo
della Commissione irachena per l’integrità pubblica, Rathi al-Rathi è stato accusato
dal primo ministro al-Maliki di corruzione, in una lettera prima tenuta segreta
ed ora a disposizione del NYT. Si parla di centinaia di migliaia di $ di spese
non documentate da parte della Commissione per l’integrità pubblica.
Nyt 061211
Iraq Is Failing to Spend Billions in Oil Revenues
By JAMES GLANZ
BAGHDAD, Dec. 10 — Iraq is failing to spend billions of dollars of
oil revenues that have been set aside to rebuild its damaged roads,
schools and power stations and to repair refineries and pipelines.
– Iraqi ministries are
spending as little as 15 percent of the 2006 capital budgets they received for
the rebuilding — with some of the weakest spending taking place at the Oil
Ministry, which relies on damaged and frequently
sabotaged pipelines and pumping stations to move the oil that provides nearly
all of the country’s revenues. In essence, the money is available —
despite extensive sabotage, the oil money is flowing — but the Iraqi system
has not been able to put it to work.
The country is facing this national failure to
spend even as American financial support dwindles. Among reasons for the problems — like a large
turnover in government personnel — is a strange new one: bureaucrats are so fearful and
confused by anticorruption measures put in place by the American and Iraqi
governments that they are afraid to sign off on contracts.
The inability to spend the money raises serious questions for the
government, which has to demonstrate to citizens who are skeptical and
suspicious of government corruption that it can improve basic services,
and that at a time when American funds for reconstruction are being reduced, it
can prove to other foreign donors that it can quickly put to use the money they
may be willing to commit.
– After the expenditure
of roughly $22 billion in American taxpayer dollars on Iraq reconstruction, the increase
of the Iraqi capital budget was seen by many as a sign that oil revenues
could finally begin paying for the rebuilding, four years after Bush
administration predictions that the country could afford the program on its
own.
– Iraq’s overall
capital budget in 2006 was nine trillion Iraqi dinars, or about $6 billion, said Abdulbasit Turki Saeed, president of the Iraqi Board of Supreme Audit and a
member of the Iraqi cabinet’s economic committee.
But Mr. Saeed said that across the entire
government, only about 20 percent of the capital budget had been spent,
according to the committee’s recent figures. A senior Western official agreed
with that estimate.
“It’s slow. It’s disappointing,” the Western
official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not
authorized to discuss the subject publicly. “In general, they have had trouble
getting projects started.”
The problem was briefly acknowledged in the
report last week by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which gave similar figures
for capital expenditures and said that “many ministries can do little more than
pay salaries.”
In interviews, alarmed Western and Iraqi
officials sought to put the best face on the problem, saying they thought that
the pace of spending had picked up in the last two to three months as the
government began taking steps to improve its performance.
Those officials said that in a nation with
reconstruction needs around every corner, the puzzling phenomenon of unspent money was partly
explained by the rapid turnover in governments, security woes, endemic corruption
and a lack of technocrats skilled at jobs like writing contracts and managing
complex projects. In short, nearly all the ills that have undermined the
American rebuilding program seem to be plaguing the Iraqi one.
– Hussain
al-Shahristani, the Iraqi oil minister, said he
thought that he could spend substantially more of this year’s budget if he
could resolve administrative bottlenecks, like Finance Ministry delays in
authorizing payments.
“It’s
the bureaucracy,” Mr. Shahristani said. “Particularly
financial people take too long to change their old habits.”
But some American and Iraqi officials here are also saying that the
stringent measures they had favored to slow the rampant corruption may be
especially daunting for bureaucrats who have little experience with
Western-style regulations and oversight. Those officials say that Iraqis who
have seen their colleagues arrested and jailed in anticorruption sweeps are
reluctant to put their own name on a contract.
“As it’s applied right now, this new thing
scares the hell out of everybody,” one Western official here said.
The colliding priorities of oversight and
spending have left American and Iraqi officials in a quandary as they work
behind the scenes on the so-called “Compact with Iraq” — the centerpiece of the
American Embassy’s effort to create economic and political milestones that this
nation promises to meet in exchange for pledges of foreign investment and
support.
Anticorruption
officials themselves are facing a loss of support, with the most serious impact
felt by Rathi al-Rathi, the head of Iraq’s Commission on Public Integrity,
who has been privately accused by Western and Iraqi officials of zealotry,
political bias and other failings.
A previously undisclosed letter to Mr. Rathi from prime minister Nuri
Kamal al-Maliki, dated Sept. 6, is close to
an accusation that Mr.
Rathi himself is guilty of corruption. The letter, a copy of which was
provided to The New York Times, directs him to account for what the prime minister asserts are hundreds
of thousands of dollars of undocumented expenses by the commission.
Ali al-Shabot, a spokesman for Mr. Rathi, who
was traveling last week, at first insisted that the letter was secret and that
he could not discuss it. But finally he dismissed its charges as based on bad
information. Mr. Shabot indicated there was at least one good reason that,
despite the pressure, the commission would remain in business. He confidently
pointed out that international donors who provide financing to Iraq do so “with
the guarantee that there are institutions to oversee the money.”
While it is clear that new financial support
is unlikely without a strong anticorruption campaign in place, Iraq’s inability
to spend its own money undermines the message that the country will actually be
able to use the support if provided.
“People we are trying to deal with and obtain
additional funds for Iraq will come back and say, ‘Iraq is not spending its own
resources,’ ” said Yahia Said, a research fellow at the London School of
Economics who is working as a consultant to the United Nations on the compact.
Mr. Shahristani, the oil minister, who has put
new anticorruption measures in place on top of those imposed from the outside,
said the solution was to teach the bureaucrats how to cope with the new rules.
“Obviously I’ve heard of these complaints,” he
said of the criticisms of the anticorruption organizations. “I don’t think that
they have gone too far. I think this is necessary given the level of corruption
that we have inherited.”
– Iraq’s total budget
is about $32 billion in 2006 and is projected to be more than $40
billion in 2007, said Bayan Jabr, the Iraqi finance minister, in an interview. Most of the budget, which comes almost entirely from oil revenues,
is consumed in operating expenses, including roughly $8 billion for
ministry salaries and pensions and $6 billion for Iraq’s socialist-style
food and fuel subsidies.
The nation has spent those funds much more
easily than it has spent the $6 billion for capital improvements — a
number that by some projections could roughly double next year in view of
Iraq’s vast infrastructure needs.
– According to a report
by the Oil Ministry, about half of the money was to go for repair of pipelines,
building refineries, improving oil fields, repairs on export terminals, and
other improvements to the oil industry. The remainder
was to be spent on projects ranging from improving the electrical system to
irrigation systems to roads and government buildings of various types.
The same report says that, for example, Iraq
is in need of major new oil storage tanks, a 42-inch-diameter pipeline in the
south and better electrical generation to run the oil pumps.
Officials are still sorting out what went
wrong in the early months of the 2006 program, but some of the problems were
similar in kind if not in detail to the ones that derailed major portions of
the American effort.
First, after the December 2005 elections,
politicians jockeyed for ministerial posts for months, creating uncertainty
about whether priorities would change, and then the newly seated officials were
unfamiliar with their jobs. At the same time, deepening security problems not
only made purchasing and construction difficult, but also continued to drive
skilled midlevel ministry employees out of the country.
Final numbers across the ministries will not
be available until year’s end, but Mr. Jabr, the finance minister, said
that a few trends had emerged. Expenditures at the Housing and Construction
Ministry and the Oil Ministry were low, while at the other end of the spectrum, the Electricity
and Water Resources Ministries were spending as much as three-quarters of their
allocations.
But the overall picture is clear, said Lt.
Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, who as commander of the Multi-National Security Transition
Command-Iraq works extensively with the Interior and Defense Ministries, which
he expects to spend about half of their capital budgets this year.
“I think the government of Iraq has got a
challenge writ large,” General Dempsey said. “The 27 ministries will not
execute their 2006 budgets.”
American and Iraqi officials are already
taking steps to improve the situation, streamlining the contracting process,
giving training sessions on the process to ministry employees and, Mr. Jabr
said, putting in place measures to penalize ministries that do not spend money
fast enough.
General Dempsey said the unspent money in the
security ministries in 2006 would not be lost, because Iraq had agreed to allow
the funds to be held in the same foreign accounts that are used to coordinate
the Pentagon’s military purchases until the agencies were ready to use it.
As the financial and political stakes rise
within the Iraqi-financed rebuilding program, few officials have escaped blame.
The public integrity commission is cited most
often as intimidating. But those who deal with investigations of questionable
deals and officials on the take in a historically corrupt country are not
surprised by those complaints. “This is normal,” said Mr. Shabot, the integrity
commission spokesman. “They hate us because we are monitoring them.”
Mr. Jabr expressed deep impatience with
ministry officials who, he said, told him that part of the reason they were
moving so slowing was to avoid running afoul of the integrity commission.
“I said, ‘Why are you afraid? If you are not a
thief, don’t be afraid,’ ” Mr. Jabr recalled.
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