BAGHDAD, Iraq – The Iraqi government has suffered $4 billion in costs over the past two months due to losses from violence, fighting the war with Islamic State (ISIS) and because oil fields have fallen into the hands of militants, an MP said. Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said that Iraq’s budget woes for the current year will be worse than anticipated by the government in Baghdad. Hesham Eghabi, a member of the parliament’s finance committee, told reporters that Baghdad is far from the aims of the budget for the current year. He said that in the last two months security problems in Iraq and the government’s loss of some oil fields to the militants decreased oil production and exports, causing “Baghdad $4 billion in financial losses.” Speaking of a larger budget deficit in Iraq, Eghabi said: “the Ministry of Oil needs to ramp up oil production to 3.3 million barrel per day in order to deal with the budget deficit that Iraq is facing from local financial problems and falling oil prices.” International oil prices have dropped by nearly 60 percent, reflected in Iraq’s 2015 budget with an estimated 22 billion of deficit. In a statement released on Sunday, the IMF announced that Iraq’s 2015 budget deficit is expected to be much larger than officials had anticipatet. In January, Iraq's parliament approved a budget worth 119 trillion Iraqi dinars ($105 billion), revised to lower the forecast for oil to $56 a barrel from $70 as originally assumed. It came with a deficit of 25 trillion dinars ($22 billion dollars).
