Advisers pleased with progress Iraqis made with provincial budgets

Advisers pleased with progress Iraqis made with provincial budgets
By James Warden, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Thursday, May 29, 2008

MOSUL, Iraq — Security forces have gotten much of the attention in the struggle to turn more responsibility over to the Iraqis. But U.S. provincial advisers say they are seeing reassuring progress on something most Americans take for granted at home: the budget process.

Mike Hankey, economics section chief for the Ninevah Provincial Reconstruction Team, said officials here have rapidly embraced a heretofore unfamiliar budget process and are using it to take care of their peoples’ needs.

Saddam Hussein’s regime invested little fiscal authority in the country’s provinces, Hankey said. The provinces depended on the central government for money because they did not collect state and local taxes, Hankey said.

While they still do not levy their own taxes, the provinces now must submit budget requests to the Iraqi government. This has forced provincial officials to learn a new bottom-up process that’s very different from the way they did things the past three decades, he said.

The learning process was initially bumpy. There was corruption during the 2006 budget process, for which some people were arrested, Hankey said. But the province quickly corrected course, cancelled corrupt contracts and re-implemented the budget for 2007 with better controls.


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=55167



uhc comment: And in other news, the Pentagon does sterling work managing and controlling the military budget --> http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=259x15481

US! of course they have no tax income...didn't the provisional government forbid taxes and tarrifs cause they wanted a 'free market' wet dream? (I know...flat tax..if you make 2.00 per week you pay .20 cents if you make 200.00 you pay 20.00 gee wonder who suffers more?)