Provinces Use Rebuilding Money in Iraq - New York Times

Provinces Use Rebuilding Money in Iraq - New York Times: "For a province whose entire 2007 capital budget is $112 million, $70 million is a stunning addition. In fact, the rate of spending has some authorities concerned that the push for provincial spending could drive a wave of corruption. They fear it could also unleash new centrifugal forces in a country already on the verge of breaking into semiautonomous regions.

But in Mr. Salih’s view, the degree of independence exercised by provinces like Babil in local rebuilding is consistent with Iraq’s Constitution, which envisions a federal system with substantial powers granted to regions.

Those moves were an indicator of the increasing uselessness of the old Iraqi apparatus of centralized government, Mr. Salih said.

“This central bureaucracy is broken,” he said. “The national ministries have proven incapable of spending their budgets.”

To illustrate his frustration, he related the case of a school in Babil that he said had been built with provincial money. But once it was built, the national education ministry proved so dysfunctional that it could not furnish it."