OIl Revenues For Iraqi Government Skyrocketing

If there is one benefit that can be found from the ever increasing price of oil it is that its helping the Iraqi government rise up and start to stand on its own feet because of the increasing amount of revenue that it is providing. The amount of money that they are taking in from oil revenues has tripled in just three years. In 2005 the total amount was about 24 billion dollars. In 2006 it went up to 32 billion dollars. By 2007 it had reached 40 billion. It is estimated that by the end of this year the figure will reach possibly 90 billion dollars. There is a little bit of a problem though. The Iraqi government has done little to improve the plight of the average Iraqi citizen with this new windfall. It is estimated that they have spent less than 1% of it on infrastructure projects such as upgrading their electrical delivery systems in order to prevent the common power outages that occur both in Baghdad and other parts of the country. The result is that the American taxpayer is picking up that tab for them. The Government Accountability Office estimates that about 48 billion dollars of U.S. funds have been directly spent on Iraqi reconstruction while most of the money taken in by the Iraqi government seems to often go missing without a trace and cannot be accounted for.