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Analysis: 5 key takeaways from Iraq’s 2015 draft budget

PM Abadi's draft budget seeks to balance the competing interests of a fractured polity while contending with a devastating drop in oil prices and a crippling legacy of fiscal mismanagement.
Iraqi PM Haider al-Abadi (center) leads the Dec. 16, 2014, Iraqi Council of Ministers meeting. (Source: Iraqi Cabinet media office)

ERBIL - Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi's Cabinet is trying to pull off a difficult balancing act – attempting to fund a war, reconstruct a country, and corral a fractured body politic, despite a devastating collapse in oil revenues.

The 2015 budget bill is now with Parliament, which gave it a first reading on Dec. 25 and will hold a session on it next week, though a final vote is unlikely until later in January.

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