Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 January 2009
The aim of this study is to examine the way in which the Iraqi government prepares its expenditure estimates and how and why they tend to differ from the actual outturn figures. One hardly expects to see an exact matching of these two figures given the difficulties in estimation which especially exist in developing countries where data bases may be less than exact and techniques crude. In Iraq this error in estimation was first alluded to by Saadi, and it was tentatively suggested that the expectation of discrepancies should be taken into account in the planning process. Others have suggested that this and other poor estimates should be examined and followed up more closely. However, its continuation and growth have not been otherwise studied.
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