WASHINGTON, 28 September 2003 — US taxpayers will not foot the cost of running and rebuilding Iraq over the next five years, and some reconstruction tasks may be postponed due to lack of money, the top US official in Iraq said. “The general assessment is that the Iraqis need something like $60 to $70 billion over the next four or five years to put their infrastructure and their economy right,” Paul Bremer told reporters at the Pentagon Friday.
Iraq should be able to net $5 billion a year from oil revenue and tax receipts starting in 2005, the target date for restoring Iraqi oil production to its maximum prewar level, Bremer said.
That money should be put toward the cost of rebuilding the country instead of international debt payments or Gulf War reparations, Bremer said. But US taxpayers will not fill the gap, he insisted, placing his hopes in an international donors conference on Iraq scheduled for Oct. 23-24 in Madrid.
“We hope we’ll get substantial donations from the donors conference. Some of those things will undoubtedly be postponed,” he said, without giving further details.
Bremer’s comments came at the end of a week he spent urging the US Congress to fully fund the $20 billion he has requested to run Iraq in fiscal year 2004.
“What we’re focused on in the $20 billion is the urgent and essential things. There are things that are probably nice to have in the $60 billion to $70 billion, and that’s something the Iraqi government will have to figure out how to do.” Iraqi Planning Minister Mahdi Al-Hafez has said Iraq needs about $100 billion over the coming three years to rebuild its war-torn economy.
“International institutions have estimated the cost of rebuilding Iraq and restoring its international and regional economic role at about $100 billion during 2004-2007,” Hafez said in a speech delivered on the sidelines of IMF meetings in Dubai last week.
The World Bank has not provided estimates of Iraq’s reconstruction needs, saying it was still assessing them and would only provide a figure at the Madrid donors conference. Bremer’s $20-billion price tag is part of a massive $87-billion funding request US President George W. Bush has submitted to the US Congress to finance military and reconstruction operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
While there is broad support in Congress for approving funding to support US troops in Iraq, many lawmakers have balked at the remainder of the request, saying they want to see a clearer, more transparent plan for the occupation of Iraq and more help from the international community.
Bremer said Congress should not seek to make any portion of the $20 billion repayable from future Iraqi revenues, saying it would be unwise to impose new burdens on a country that already owes more than $200 billion in debt and war reparations.
Asked “who’s going to pay for that?” Bremer promptly replied: “Not the American taxpayer.” “We are on record as saying that there needs to be a very substantial reduction in that debt,” he said.
