ANALYSIS OF TRENDS IN PUBLIC SPENDING IN CONFLICTAFFECTED ECONOMIES: IRAQ CASE WITH CONCENTRATE OF EDUCATION AND HEALTH SECTORS

Abstract

The aim of the current study is to analyze the efficiency of public spending in Iraq, by
monitoring and tracking the levels of that efficiency in the period (1997-2018), and to
analyze the changes that it has gone through and determine its causes and the most important
factors affecting it. The study found that the average public spending on output reached 17.9
percent during the period (1997-2018).
This is a minimum of 8.5 percent in 1997, and a maximum of 25.56 percent in 2004. A
general trend of volatility appears during the period (1997-2014), while the last four years
from 2015 to 2018 were almost stable. The study also showed an imbalance in the structure
of public spending and the dominance of current expenditures over investment expenditures.
And it showed that the proportion of spending on education is constant during the study
period (1997-2018).
On the level of spending on the health sector, although there are sources saying that Iraq
spends 5-7%, there are other sources that say, it only spends 3.3%, according to the
Development Indicators Group of the World Bank and WHO,
the study recommends that, in order to raise the efficiency of public spending, we should not
rely only on increasing the volume of that spending in order to achieve this, a set of measures
is required. Complementary, foremost of which is fighting corruption and renewing oversight
of the government’s performance of all its components without exception