The Minister of Planning, Dr. Khaled Battal Al-Najm, stressed that Iraq does not need more economic and development plans and strategies, as much as it needs to fund existing strategies for the purpose of implementing and applying them on the ground.
The Minister headed a joint meeting of the Sustainable Development Goals monitoring committee and the National Committee for Sustainable Development, which included the undersecretaries of the relevant ministries, their general managers, and a number of experts.
The Minister added, that there are great efforts being made by the government despite the difficulties and challenges facing Iraq, foremost of which are the repercussions of the Corona pandemic, and the lack of financial resources, which negatively affect the achievement of sustainable development goals, pointing out that Iraq is the only country in the region, Which presented a plan to recover from the Covid 19 pandemic, and approved by the Council of Ministers last week, adding that a framework for cooperation with the United Nations was concluded yesterday and includes five strategic priorities, which ultimately serve to achieve the sustainable development goals.
The Minister went on to say that there are important practical measures and steps taken by the government, in terms of improving the level of the economy and addressing development gaps, and these efforts and measures included a number of basic sectors such as agriculture, water resources, oil and energy, and the investment of associated gas, and petrochemicals, and there will be many projects. The strategy that Iraq will witness during the next few years, attributing the delay in achieving sustainable development goals, to the conditions that Iraq and the world have experienced, as a result of the repercussions of the Corona pandemic, indicating that the Ministry of Planning is working towards developing a long-term vision, which takes into account strengthening the green economy and reducing dependence on fossil fuels and move towards renewable energies through the use of clean means.
The participants reviewed Iraq’s participation in the high-level political forum and the launch of the second voluntary report, presented by the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Planning, Dr. Maher Hammad Johan, while the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Environment, Dr. Jassem Al-Falahi, presented a review of the Iraqi contributions document in the face of climate change, and the Undersecretary of the Ministry of Higher Education presented Dr. Yassin Al-Ithawi, a review of the steps achieved for the Million Tree Project.
The participants in the meeting discussed the progress made in launching the Sustainable Development Forum, which will be launched soon, as well as discussing and defining the paths of the future action plan and the results of the work achieved.